Application Passwords randomly stop working

[indextwo]

I've suffered with this problem for literal years and it's driving me bonkers.

Every so often - usually within 3-4 months, but sometimes within only a few weeks - my Application Password on my BitBucket account stops working.

I use the app password exclusively for SourceTree, and what happens is I open up the program, attempt to do a push, and it asks me for my login credentials (which are already saved). I re-enter them, and they fail. So, I have to go and create a new app password. It's the only solution that ever works (and I've learned this the long, hard way after spending hours trying to debug the issue previously). I enter my new app password, and it works again... for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, then the cycle begins again.

I'm assuming this isn't supposed to happen - I never get any kind of warning, and as mentioned, the timing is completely random. I've had one app password that lasted for 6 months, and another that barely lasted 2 weeks.

Does anyone know why this is happening, or is it just a thing?

[Theodora Boudale]

Hi,

App passwords do not expire unless they are manually revoked by a user or they are invalidated by our security team after a security incident (in this case affected users are notified and it's been a long time since we last did this). I believe this is more likely related to either SourceTree or the credential manager rather than the app password itself.

To confirm this, you can record somewhere the app password you generate. The next time this issue happens, open Git Bash or another terminal application on your computer (not from SourceTree), remove any saved credentials for bitbucket.org from your computer's credential manager, then try to clone a Bitbucket repo. You can also include the app password in the URL to test if it works:

git clone https://{bitbucket_username}:{app_password}@bitbucket.org/{workspace}/{repository}.git

Please keep in mind that this will save the app password in the repo's .git/config file, so make sure to remove it afterwards.

If this is SourceTree related, you can post in the SourceTree collection here:

• https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Sourcetree/ct-p/sourcetree

Kind regards,
Theodora