asmvik/yabai

Persistent accessibility issues on 26.4.1

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#2,805 opened on Jun 15, 2026

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help wanted

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Description

I've installed yabai, but executing any command gives me this error: yabai-msg: failed to connect to socket..

Did the exact same install on a duplicate machine yesterday and had no such trouble. Yabai is turned on for accessibility permissions in Settings. However, running /opt/homebrew/bin/yabai gives me this: yabai: could not access accessibility features! abort.. which triggers a redundant accessibility request that does nothing.

Tried uninstalling and reinstalling—same thing.

I see there's a lot of conversation about this elsewhere on this repo, but all the issues appear to be slightly different from mine or using an earlier macOS. I'm on macOS 26.4.1.

Contributor guide

Research direction
Investigate the accessibility permission check and socket connection logic in yabai. Look for recent changes in macOS 26.4.1 that affect accessibility APIs or socket paths. Check if the socket file exists and has correct permissions. Review the code that triggers the accessibility authorization request and the error handling for 'could not access accessibility features'.
Tech stack
c
Domain
desktop
Issue type
Bug
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-3 hours
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Active
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Clear
Prerequisites
macOSaccessibility permissions
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
55