yabai causing browser tabs to crash

[justafren]

Hi - I've been using yabai on an intel based mac for around 4 months. It's been great except a small bug where it would occasionally cause a newly created tab on firefox to crash.

There isn't any consistency in terms of the type of websites I am visiting when the crash occurs - this would occur between 5-20 times a day depending on browser usage. I searched through the issues and couldn't find anyone else with the problem so I just lived with it as the productivity boost gained from having a nice tiling window manager outweighed this inconvience.

However I've recently gotten a new m1 macbook, I've configured it the same way as my intel (except for the additional step when disabling SIP) and I am still getting the browser tab crashes, except now they are so frequent it becomes unusable really.

The behaviour I am seeing is; -only the individual tab crashes, not firefox itself -cmd + t to open a new tab, sometimes would cause the tab to crash -new tab, google search works fine then clicking on a link in the results causes a crash -browsing a site fine and then it will crash randomly

I'm currently using yabai + skhd + spacebar (I'm on yabai-v4.0.1 ). The reason I think yabai is causing this issue is because I used the laptop vanilla for a while with no issues, installed yabai, skhd and spacebar but only started the yabai service and then saw the issue. If I disable yabai the issue goes away.

I'm assuming because no one else is having this issue and I can replicate it from one mac to another that it's something to do with my configuration.

output of csrutil status

csrutil status                         
System Integrity Protection status: unknown (Custom Configuration).

Configuration:
	Apple Internal: disabled
	Kext Signing: enabled
	Filesystem Protections: disabled
	Debugging Restrictions: disabled
	DTrace Restrictions: enabled
	NVRAM Protections: disabled
	BaseSystem Verification: enabled
	Boot-arg Restrictions: disabled
	Kernel Integrity Protections: disabled
	Authenticated Root Requirement: enabled

This is an unsupported configuration, likely to break in the future and leave your machine in an unknown state.

Here is my configs;

.yabairc

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

yabai -m config layout bsp

# Set all padding and gaps to 20pt (default: 0)
yabai -m config top_padding    30 
yabai -m config bottom_padding 20
yabai -m config left_padding   20
yabai -m config right_padding  20
yabai -m config window_gap     20

yabai -m config mouse_follows_focus          on
yabai -m config focus_follows_mouse          autoraise
yabai -m config window_placement             second_child
yabai -m config window_topmost               off
yabai -m config window_shadow                float
yabai -m config window_opacity               on
yabai -m config active_window_opacity        1.0
yabai -m config normal_window_opacity        0.90
yabai -m config window_border                on
yabai -m config window_border_width          6
yabai -m config active_window_border_color   0xff3e5ea3
yabai -m config normal_window_border_color   0xff555555
yabai -m config insert_feedback_color        0xffd75f5f
yabai -m config split_ratio                  0.50
yabai -m config auto_balance                 off
yabai -m config mouse_modifier               cmd
yabai -m config mouse_action1                move
yabai -m config mouse_action2                resize
yabai -m config mouse_drop_action            swap

# create spaces
yabai -m space --create 1
yabai -m space --create 2
yabai -m space --create 3
yabai -m space --create 4
yabai -m space --create 5
yabai -m space --create 6
yabai -m space --create 7
yabai -m space --create 8 
yabai -m space --create 9

# label spaces
yabai -m space 1 --label web
yabai -m space 2 --label code
yabai -m space 3 --label term
yabai -m space 4 --label scratch
yabai -m space 5 --label notes 
yabai -m space 6 --label zoom
yabai -m space 7 --label mail
yabai -m space 8 --label slack
yabai -m space 9 --label music

# app space rules
yabai -m rule --add app=Firefox space=web
yabai -m rule --add app=Subl space=code
yabai -m rule --add app=Terminal space=term
yabai -m rule --add app=zoom space=zoom
yabai -m rule --add app=Outlook space=mail
yabai -m rule --add app=Slack space=slack
yabai -m rule --add app=Spotify space=music
yabai -m rule --add app=Xcode space=code
yabai -m rule --add app=Emacs manage=on space=notes

yabai -m rule --add title='mylauncher' manage=off sticky=on layer=above border=off
yabai -m rule --add app="^System Preferences$" layer=above manage=off
yabai -m rule --add app="^Zoom Meeting$" layer=above manage=off
yabai -m rule --add app="Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client" layer=above manage=off
yabai -m config debug_output on

# spacebar padding on top screen
SPACEBAR_HEIGHT=$(spacebar -m config height)
yabai -m config external_bar all:$SPACEBAR_HEIGHT:20

echo "yabai configuration loaded"

.spacebarrc

#!/usr/bin/env sh

spacebar -m config position             top
spacebar -m config height               35 
spacebar -m config title                off 
spacebar -m config spaces               on
spacebar -m config clock                on
spacebar -m config power                on
spacebar -m config padding_left         20
spacebar -m config padding_right        30
spacebar -m config spacing_left         35
spacebar -m config spacing_right        35
spacebar -m config text_font            "Inconsolata:Regular:18.0"
spacebar -m config icon_font            "Hack Nerd Font:Bold:20.0"
spacebar -m config background_color     0xff202020
spacebar -m config foreground_color     0xffa8a8a8
spacebar -m config space_icon_color     0xff458588
spacebar -m config power_icon_color     0xffd3d3d3
spacebar -m config battery_icon_color   0xffd75f5f
spacebar -m config dnd_icon_color       0xffa8a8a8
spacebar -m config clock_icon_color     0xffa8a8a8
spacebar -m config power_icon_strip      
spacebar -m config space_icon_strip                    ﱘ 
spacebar -m config space_icon           
spacebar -m config clock_icon           
spacebar -m config dnd_icon             
spacebar -m config clock_format         "%A %e %b %R"
spacebar -m config right_shell          off
spacebar -m config right_shell_icon     
spacebar -m config right_shell_command  "$HOME/.config/cpu.sh"
spacebar -m config display main 
echo "spacebar configuration loaded.."

.skhd

cmd - 1 : yabai -m space --focus web 
cmd - 2 : yabai -m space --focus code
cmd - 3 : yabai -m space --focus term 
cmd - 4 : yabai -m space --focus scratch
cmd - 5 : yabai -m space --focus notes 
cmd - 6 : yabai -m space --focus zoom
cmd - 7 : yabai -m space --focus mail
cmd - 8 : yabai -m space --focus slack
cmd - 9 : yabai -m space --focus music
cmd - 0 : yabai -m space --focus 10
 
cmd - j : yabai -m window --focus next || yabai -m window --focus first
cmd - k : yabai -m window --focus prev || yabai -m window --focus last

# Move focussed window to space
shift + alt - 1 : yabai -m window --space 1 && yabai -m space --focus 1
shift + alt - 2 : yabai -m window --space 2 && yabai -m space --focus 2
shift + alt - 3 : yabai -m window --space 3 && yabai -m space --focus 3
shift + alt - 4 : yabai -m window --space 4 && yabai -m space --focus 4
shift + alt - 5 : yabai -m window --space 5 && yabai -m space --focus 5
shift + alt - 6 : yabai -m window --space 6 && yabai -m space --focus 6
shift + alt - 7 : yabai -m window --space 7 && yabai -m space --focus 7
shift + alt - 8 : yabai -m window --space 8 && yabai -m space --focus 8
shift + alt - 9 : yabai -m window --space 9 && yabai -m space --focus 9
shift + alt - 0 : yabai -m window --space 10 && yabai -m space --focus 10

# Kill a container
shift + alt - q : yabai -m window --close
shift + alt - w : yabai -m space --destroy

And here are screenshots of the crash - I decided to test on chromium to see if it happened there too and it seems to crash as well, albeit a different error.

Firefox

chromium

Interestingly I have been using safari this morning and haven't had a crash yet - I will update this if that changes.

If there is any additional information I can provide that would help, let me know.

Thanks for any help :)

[justafren]

I continued to use Safari and didn't experience any tab crashes which is quite interesting.

However, I discovered 2 more issues. Firstly, when I opened excel or libre calc, after a few actions it would lock the laptop up and I'd have to restart. Disabling yabai and using those applications works fine.

Secondly, I started to experience a mixmatch of workspaces. I'd select 4 and it would go to 5, or I'd select 5 and it would change to 5 but on spacebar it would display as 9 being selected. Restarting yabai fixed this but then it would occur again. I'm using the exact same config files as I used on my intel where I didn't experience these problems.

I've had to disable yabai for now but if I can provide any more information to help diagnose these issues let me know.

Thanks again

[koekeishiya]

If this is an issue in the latest version of yabai, then there isn't much that can be done from my pov. Hopefully Firefox has improved their handling of AX-API requests since then. See #1344 for issues witih Libreoffice.