Installing yabai (from HEAD)

If you want to run the latest and greatest version of yabai, you can install off of HEAD. Note that this will require codesigning with a self-signed certificate, so you'll have to create one first (and only once).

First, open Keychain Access.app. In its menu, navigate to Keychain Access, then Certificate Assistance, then click Create a Certificate.... This will open the Certificate Assistant. Choose these options:

• Name: yabai-cert,
• Identity Type: Self-Signed Root
• Certificate Type: Code Signing

Click Create, then Continue to create the certificate.

Now onto installing yabai:

brew install koekeishiya/formulae/yabai --HEAD
codesign -fs 'yabai-cert' $(which yabai)

Open System Preferences.app and navigate to Security & Privacy, then Privacy, then Accessibility. Click the lock icon at the bottom and enter your password to allow changes to the list. Add yabai manually by using the + labelled button. When installed using Homebrew, yabai will usually be at /usr/local/bin/yabai. Check the box next to yabai to allow accessibility permissions.

Now install the scripting addition.

# install the scripting addition
sudo yabai --install-sa

To run yabai, simply start it.

# start yabai
brew services start yabai

macOS Big Sur - Automatically load scripting addition on startup

In macOS Big Sur we had to switch to using the mach API to inject the scripting addition. Injection now has to run with elevated (root) privileges, meaning that yabai is no longer able to automatically load the scripting addition during startup. However, you can use the following workaround to make it pretty much as seamless as it used to be. The trick is to allow your user to execute yabai --load-sa as the root user without having to enter a password. To do this, we add a new configuration entry that is loaded by /etc/sudoers.

# open/create a new file for writing using the vim editor (use nano or something if you are not familiar with vim)
sudo vim /private/etc/sudoers.d/yabai

# input the line below into the file you are editing.
# replace <user> with your username (output of whoami). 
# change the path to the yabai binary if necessary 
<user> ALL = (root) NOPASSWD: /usr/local/bin/yabai --load-sa

After the above edit has been made, simply add the command to load the scripting addition to the top of your yabairc config file

# the scripting-addition must be loaded manually if
# you are running yabai on macOS Big Sur. Uncomment
# the following line to have the injection performed
# when the config is executed during startup.
#
# for this to work you must configure sudo such that
# it will be able to run the command without password

sudo yabai --load-sa
yabai -m signal --add event=dock_did_restart action="sudo yabai --load-sa"

# .. more yabai startup stuff

Updating to latest HEAD

To upgrade yabai to the latest version from HEAD, simply reinstall it with Homebrew, codesign it, reinstall the scripting addition and restart Dock.app again:

# set codesigning certificate name here (default: yabai-cert)
export YABAI_CERT=

# stop yabai
brew services stop koekeishiya/formulae/yabai

# reinstall yabai
brew reinstall koekeishiya/formulae/yabai
codesign -fs "${YABAI_CERT:-yabai-cert}" "$(brew --prefix yabai)/bin/yabai"

# uninstall the scripting addition
sudo yabai --uninstall-sa

# installing the scripting addition will restart Dock.app
sudo yabai --install-sa

# finally, start yabai
brew services start koekeishiya/formulae/yabai