# yabai

17 Hacker News commenters recommended yabai and 14 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free tiling window manager for macOS that people use for keyboard-driven workspaces; its advanced features need System Integrity Protection disabled, and it can break after macOS updates.

## Why people recommend it

- Tiling window management on macOS (2 comments): "With yabai and skhd I've gotten it pretty closely to where I previously was with i3." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48917282)) "I use Yabai, which is pretty good" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47000291))
- Good workspace and space switching (2 comments): "I think it works great with the horizontal navigation between workspaces" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956509)) "Yabai works while InstantSpaces doesn't" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47711007))
- Works with skhd and BetterTouchTool (2 comments): "With yabai and skhd I've gotten it pretty closely to where I previously was with i3." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48917282)) "I have actually been using it with BTT to fix this exact problem." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47713555))

## What people warn about

- Requires disabling System Integrity Protection (6 comments): "Yabai supports this perfectly ... but it requires disabling system integrity protection" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47370883)) "requires so much permissions and potentially disabling system integrity protection" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47712055)) "some features required disabling SIP (System Integrity Protection)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47710659))
- Relies on undocumented or hacky APIs (3 comments): "Rectangle, Yabai and whatnot can only hope that the undocumented private APIs that macOS _allows_ them to use today don't mysteriously break tomorrow." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49809312)) "yabai does this by binary patching a part of the operating system" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47709136)) "They are a collection of hacks on the accessibility API" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49715993))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [AeroSpace](https://hackerapproved.com/p/aerospace.md): 77 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "yabai", https://hackerapproved.com/p/yabai/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).