Karabiner-Elements does not work with MacOS Monterey

[Flo63973]

After updating my Mac to the new Monterey version (Version 12.0.1 (21A559)) Karabiner-Elements does not work anymore. Every time I start it I get a popup with "Driver Alert" telling me "The current virtual keyboard and mouse driver is outdated. Please deactivate driver and restart macOS to upgrade the driver."

Then there is a button where I can deactivate the driver. I click it and after entering my system password the dialog says that the driver is now deactivated and that I should now restart macOS and then activate the driver again.

So I close Karabiner-Elements, restart the system and then I start Karabiner-Elements again in order to activate the driver again. But this does not work. Instead, when opening Karabiner-Elements, the same popup dialog as described above shows up again and tells me that the driver is outdated and that I need to deacivate it again.

I've tried it many times but it never worked.

I also tried "brew uninstall karabiner-elements" and then "brew install karabiner-elements", but that also didn't work.

I've already lost many hours and would really appreciate help with this.

[chrishulbert]

Had the same exact problem and symptoms. Downgrading to 14.3 worked in my case: https://github.com/pqrs-org/Karabiner-Elements/releases/download/v14.3.0/Karabiner-Elements-14.3.0.dmg

[pawelswiecki]

I'm on macOS Monterey 12.3.1 (21E258), and I'm experiencing exactly the same issue as described by OP. Downgrading to 14.3, as well as to 14.2, did not help in any way. Reinstalling to the current version (14.4) neither.

Log shows the following messages:

[2022-04-21 14:47:38.546] [warning] [virtual_hid_device_service] driver_version_ is mismatched: Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDeviceClient expected: 10600, actual dext: 10300

Over and over again.

[asmodeus812]

Same issue with 14.3 and 14.2 and the latest one. I was never able to make VirtualHIDD allow option show in the preferences / policy window.

[miikargh]

I'm having the same issue too. My logs show the following message:

[2022-06-01 12:56:22.550] [warning] [virtual_hid_device_service] driver_version_ is mismatched: Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDeviceClient expected: 10600, actual dext: std::nullopt

[jonaburg]

issue is happening with me as well on Monterey 12.3.1 with karabiner 14.4

[mazimmer]

dito, on macOS 12.3.1, with latest beta buld 14.4.22

[zimplexing]

It also happens to me

[ishan]

downgrading to 14.3 as suggested by @chrishulbert solved my issues.

[gun0317]

Restarting helped me. karabiner 14.4.0 / Monterey 12.1

[ekaradzha-qb]

Same here. Not work on Monterey.

[dpo]

Restarting worked for me.

[zhengxiangyue]

Same. Sad

[GreenAsJade]

Restarting helped me. karabiner 14.4.0 / Monterey 12.1

Me too. Karabiner looks completely relaidout compared to the screenshot though - "restart" is under "Quit, restart" now.

[gary-ruizhang]

This happened sometimes and back to working after a while without any modification. This weird issue occurs every few weeks。

[ischell]

Same, downgrading to 14.3 fixed it

[paulhybryant]

None of these worked for me (downgrading / restart) I also tried uninstall, reboot and reinstall, still no lock.

From the log I can see the following:

[2022-11-25 10:07:57.965] [info] [observer] Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad (device_id:4294968503) is observed. [2022-11-25 10:07:57.965] [info] [observer] rescan devices... [2022-11-25 10:07:58.025] [info] [observer] USB Keyboard (device_id:4294968570) is observed. [2022-11-25 10:08:13.770] [info] [session_monitor] version 14.10.0 [2022-11-25 10:08:13.802] [info] [session_monitor] session_monitor_receiver_client is started. [2022-11-25 10:08:13.806] [info] [session_monitor] on_console_changed: true [2022-11-25 10:08:13.807] [info] [session_monitor] session_monitor_receiver_client is connected. [2022-11-25 10:08:13.807] [info] [session_monitor] connected [2022-11-25 10:08:13.808] [info] [grabber] current_console_user_id: 180029 [2022-11-25 10:08:13.809] [info] [grabber] receiver is terminated [2022-11-25 10:08:13.810] [info] [grabber] receiver is initialized [2022-11-25 10:08:13.810] [info] [grabber] receiver: bound [2022-11-25 10:08:13.810] [info] [grabber] receiver: chown socket: 180029 [2022-11-25 10:08:15.751] [error] [observer] grabber_client error: Connection reset by peer [2022-11-25 10:08:15.751] [info] [observer] grabber_client is closed. [2022-11-25 10:08:16.753] [info] [observer] grabber_client is connected. [2022-11-25 10:08:16.753] [info] [observer] rescan devices...

And the devices tab in karabiner shows nothing