Cross-platform utilities for prompting the user for credentials or a passphrase, for example to authenticate with a server or read a protected key. Includes native programs for MacOS and Windows, hence no 'tcltk' is required. Password entry can be invoked in two different ways: directly from R via the askpass() function, or indirectly as password-entry back-end for 'ssh-agent' or 'git-credential' via the ssh_askpass and git_askpass environment variables. Thereby the user can be prompted for credentials or a passphrase if needed when R calls out to git or ssh.