yubiswitch

yubiswitch is an OSX status bar application to enable/disable a Yubikey Nano or Neo (opens in a new tab) from Yubico.

Yubico is the producer of the Yubikeys: a hardware authentication device, designed to provide an easy to use and secure compliment to the traditional username and password.

By touching the exposed gold edge, a YubiKey Nano emits a One Time Password (OTP) as if it was typed in from a keyboard. The unique passcode is verified by a YubiKey compliant application.

So far all looks great doesn't it? :D

Whooops! You see? I brought my laptop (lid opened) with me for a walk to a meeting room holding it with my right hand touching the golden stripe and this caused the Nano to start sending random OTP passwords to my Vim session, and to the FB chat window I had opened with my wife, and right now she's been asking WTF I've been writing :P

This status bar app allows you to avoid sending those accidental OTP passwords by allowing you to enable or disable the yubikey using a convenient global keyboard hot key that you can configure yourself.

Download the latest version in DMG format from github release page here (opens in a new tab).

This application needs to run with escalated privileges in order to exclusively grab the USB HID interface that drives the NANO/NEO-n Yubikey. Running the main app as root is a p.i.t.a. so YubiSwitch installs an helper daemon with root privileges which contains the logic to grab the USB HID interface, the main application talks to this daemon via XPC calls. When you start YubiSwitch for the first time it will ask for your user's password, this is expected to install the helper before mentioned.

If you use your Yubikey as part of multi-factor authentication for Mac (opens in a new tab) then you might want to make sure that the option "Enable yubikey when system locks/sleeps" is enabled.

If want yubiswitch to lock your computer when you unplug the key make sure that your security settings are as follow:

If you are running macOS Catalina (10.15) or later, open System Preferences and go to Security & Privacy, Privacy. Under Accessibility, click the lock to make changes and then use the + button to add /Applications/yubiswitch.app.. Repeat under Input Monitoring.

Yubiswitch is signed/notarised by the "Supratude Limited" developer account (@drothera) and so if you see this then this is expected.