yay
Aur helper in Developer tools
Recommended as a pacman front end for Arch Linux that handles AUR packages and shows PKGBUILD diffs; critics call it risky and note it lacks proper sandboxing.
Recommended as a pacman front end for Arch Linux that handles AUR packages and shows PKGBUILD diffs; critics call it risky and note it lacks proper sandboxing.
17 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 11
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 65%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 11 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Convenient wrapper around pacman
“a frontend to Pacman which holds your hand in just the right ways”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux” “if you just use "yay" you don't run into Pacman woes”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux” “I like the aur wrappers for the convenience”
Comment from 13 Jun 2026 in “Arch Linux Now Believes Malware Incident Under Control: More Than 1,500 Packages” Shows PKGBUILD diffs on updates
“i noticed the diffs are a little easier/different versus yay”
Comment from 12 Jun 2026 in “AUR Packages Compromised with Infostealer and Rootkit” “shows me the PKGBUILD diff on every update”
Comment from 13 Jun 2026 in “Arch Linux Now Believes Malware Incident Under Control: More Than 1,500 Packages” Smooth system updates
“let it run an outstanding update of 77 packages, mostly new Plasma/KDE to 6.5.4 from 6.5.3”
Comment from 12 Dec 2025 in “Wayland Nvidia” “yay updates itself. I've never once had this problem.”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Security risk from AUR packages
“I think it using it is very risky and that you should just stick to pacman + git/makepkg.”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux” “yay and ilk don't do proper sandboxing”
Comment from 20 Jun 2026 in “AURpocalypse now: a look at the recent AUR attacks” “don't put in Yay + the AUR by default”
Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “Arch Linux AUR Hit by Another Wave of Now More Sophisticated Malware Attack”
What people recommend instead
The same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| yayThis page | 11 | 6 | 65% | 5 | — | — |
| paru | 6 | 1 | 86% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
17 of the 19 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Yay does a fairly good job of converting deb files for use with arch based systems.”
“yay and ilk don't do proper sandboxing”
“`UpgradeSelect` only applies to `yay -Syu` so it only filters the upgrade list.”
“Seems it is time I dump paru for yay.”
“don't put in Yay + the AUR by default”
“I like the aur wrappers for the convenience”
“shows me the PKGBUILD diff on every update”
“i noticed the diffs are a little easier/different versus yay”
“It seems my stubborn resistance to using yay saved my bacon”
“The good news is you can run `yay -Pwwq` to get the latest Arch news headlines straight in your terminal.”
“I think it using it is very risky and that you should just stick to pacman + git/makepkg.”
“a frontend to Pacman which holds your hand in just the right ways”
“yay updates itself. I've never once had this problem.”
“it's very annoying, when it happens every few months”
“if you just use "yay" you don't run into Pacman woes”
“Yay is the best thing to happen to Arch Linux and its derivatives.”
“let it run an outstanding update of 77 packages, mostly new Plasma/KDE to 6.5.4 from 6.5.3”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.