Installation
YubiKey Manager (ykman) can be installed on Windows, macOS, and Linux systems.
Download ykman
Download ykman installers from: YubiKey Manager Releases.
The installers include both the full graphical application and command line tool.
Additional installation packages are available from third parties. Refer to the third party provider for installation instructions. This applies to:
- Pre-built packages from platform package managers.
- Homebrew and MacPorts for macOS.
- Linux distribution third party package maintainers.
OS-independent Installation
ykman can be installed independently of platform by using pip
(or equivalent). From a command line, run:
pip install --user yubikey-manager
Windows
To install ykman on Windows:
- As Administrator, run the
.exe
executable. - As Administrator, open a command window with Run.
- From the download directory, run the installer executable,
C: yubikey-manager-qt-1.2.3.win64.exe
.
PowerShell
If you are using PowerShell you may need to either prefix an ampersand to run the executable, or you can use two commands: one to change directory, then one to run the executable from the working directory. For example:
PS> & "C:\Users..."
or
PS> cd "C:\Users..."
PS> .\yubikey-manager-qt-1.2.3.exe
Silent Install
Adding /S
to this makes the installation silent. The S
must be capitalized.
Mapped Drives
If running from a mapped drive, you might need to add /D <install path>
. This ensures ykman is installed in the correct drive.
PS> .\yubikey-manager-qt-1.2.3.exe /S /D "C:\Program Files\Yubico\YubiKey Manager"
Uninstaller
Once installed, the application uninstaller, ykman-uninstall.exe
, is located in the ykman install directory.
Running the uninstaller starts the uninstall process. The /S
silent install option described above works with the uninstaller.
MacOS
Using Homebrew for CLI
From the Mac’s terminal run the brew
command below.
This is the preferred install method for the CLI as it will enable native ykman
command functionality without the need to change directories.
brew install ykman
Using Package File
To install the GUI on Mac, download the latest package from the releases linked in the Download ykman
section at the start of this article. Once downloaded, double-click the .pkg
file and follow the prompts.
Linux
On Linux platforms you need to have pcscd
installed and running to communicate with a YubiKey over the SmartCard interface. Additionally, you might need to set permissions for your user to access YubiKeys via the HID interfaces.
Some of the libraries used by ykman have C-extensions, and might require additional dependencies to build, such as swig
and potentially PCSC lite
.
Third Party Linux Distributions
Yubico provides packages for Ubuntu in the yubico/stable PPA.
Note
For Linux amd64 ONLY and other architectures such as ARM, use the general pip
instructions above.
If you are using packages from one of the several Linux distributions’ third party repositories, follow the installation steps from the Linux distribution.
For example:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:yubico/stable
sudo apt update
sudo apt install yubikey-manager
See also the Yubico Support Knowledge Base article Installing Yubico Software on Linux.
Developers
For more information, see the ykman CLI page on developers.yubico.com. For APDUs, see the APDU page in the .NET YubiKey SDK User’s Manual.
To get in touch with Yubico Support, click here.