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:

  1. As Administrator, run the .exe executable.
  2. As Administrator, open a command window with Run.
  3. 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.