I Got Tired of My YubiKey Typing OTPs Everywhere — So I Fixed It

Sudheendra chari — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 12:37:05 +0000

My YubiKey Kept Spamming OTPs — So I Built a macOS Menu Bar Fix

If you use a YubiKey on macOS, you probably know this moment.

You plug it in.

Your cursor happens to be in Slack.

And suddenly:

cccccccbhtnlrnhjkgljuhv...

Your YubiKey just typed an OTP into the wrong window.

It’s not dangerous.

It’s just… annoying.

After the third time this happened to me mid-conversation, I went looking for a clean way to quickly disable the OTP interface — without digging into CLI commands every time.

That’s how YubiToggle was born.

The Problem

YubiKeys expose multiple USB interfaces (OTP, FIDO, CCID, etc.).

When OTP is enabled, pressing the YubiKey sends a one-time password as keyboard input. That’s great when you intend it.

It’s less great when:

Your cursor is in Slack
Or in a terminal
Or in a production shell 😅

Yes, you can disable OTP using ykman:

ykman config usb --disable OTP --force

But that’s not something I wanted to do manually every time.

What About YubiSwitch?

There’s already a macOS utility called YubiSwitch that solves this problem.

But for me:

It felt outdated
Development activity seemed minimal
The UX wasn’t very “macOS-native”

Instead of forking it, I decided to build something small, modern, and focused.

🔐 YubiToggle

YubiToggle is a minimal macOS menu bar app that lets you toggle your YubiKey’s OTP interface on and off with a single click.

It lives quietly in your menu bar:

No Dock icon
No background daemon
No unnecessary features

Features

One-click OTP enable/disable
Clear visual state:
- 🟢 OTP enabled
- ⚪ OTP disabled
- 🔵 Syncing
- 🟠 Error
Auto-syncs with hardware every 10 seconds
Optional launch at login
Optional system notifications
Universal binary (Apple Silicon + Intel)

Built With

Swift 6
SwiftUI
MenuBarExtra (no Dock presence)
ykman CLI under the hood

The app is intentionally a thin wrapper around a well-maintained CLI, paired with a clean native UI.

How It Works

YubiToggle checks the current device state using:

ykman info

And toggles OTP via:

ykman config usb --disable OTP --force
ykman config usb --enable OTP --force

All CLI calls are wrapped in async Swift code so the UI stays responsive.

To avoid UI drift (for example, if the device is modified externally), the app refreshes the hardware state every 10 seconds.

Project Structure

The project is intentionally simple:

YubiToggle/
├── Package.swift
└── Sources/YubiToggle/
    ├── YubiToggleApp.swift
    ├── CLI/YubiCLI.swift
    ├── Models/YubiKeyDevice.swift
    ├── ViewModels/YubiKeyViewModel.swift
    └── Views/
        ├── MenuBarView.swift
        └── SettingsView.swift

No over-engineering — just enough separation to keep things clean and readable.

A Few Design Decisions

macOS 13+ only
I chose modern SwiftUI APIs over backward compatibility.
Use ykman instead of raw HID access
Let Yubico handle device complexity; I focus on UX.
Not notarized (yet)
macOS will ask you to “Open Anyway” on first launch. This is a one-time step.

Installation

Homebrew

brew tap sudheendrachari/tap
brew install --cask yubitoggle

Manual

Download the DMG from GitHub releases and drag the app to Applications.

Repository:
https://github.com/sudheendrachari/yubi-toggle

Why Open Source?

This is the kind of tool that:

Solves a small but real annoyance
Doesn’t need to be commercial
Can benefit from community feedback

If you use a YubiKey on macOS and have ever wished you could quickly disable OTP without touching Terminal, this might be useful.

What I Learned

Even tiny utilities benefit from:

A clear, narrow scope
Native UX
Minimal features done well
Treating CLI tools as first-class building blocks

Sometimes the best apps are just good interfaces over solid existing tools.

If you build macOS utilities or work with hardware-backed security tools, I’d love to hear what you’ve built — or what’s annoyed you enough to consider building something yourself.

DEV Community: Sudheendra chari