Troubleshooting

YapYap says it cannot start safely

YapYap always runs WhatsApp inside Chromium's sandbox, which keeps a compromised page from reaching the rest of your computer. It never runs without it. If the sandbox cannot start, YapYap explains why and quits instead.

On Linux, this usually happens with the AppImage on Ubuntu 24.04 and later, and on other distributions that restrict unprivileged user namespaces through AppArmor. An AppImage cannot ship the helper Chromium uses instead, so it depends on those namespaces.

Choose one of these safe options:

• Use the Flatpak, DEB or RPM package. The Flatpak brings its own sandbox, and the DEB and RPM packages install Chromium's helper, so none of them depend on user namespaces. See Install.

• Allow the AppImage with an AppArmor profile. Save this as /etc/apparmor.d/yapyap-appimage, changing the path to where you keep the AppImage, then run sudo apparmor_parser -r /etc/apparmor.d/yapyap-appimage:

  abi <abi/4.0>,
  include <tunables/global>
  
  profile yapyap-appimage /home/*/Applications/YapYap*.AppImage flags=(unconfined) {
    userns,
  }

Never turn the sandbox off

Do not start YapYap with --no-sandbox, and do not lift the user-namespace restriction for your whole system. YapYap refuses to run without its sandbox, and lifting the restriction weakens every other app too.

Reporting a problem

Choose Help → Report a Problem…, describe what went wrong, and read what the report includes. Copy and Open GitHub copies the report and opens GitHub's bug form in your browser with it filled in; YapYap itself sends nothing, and you can edit everything before you submit it.

To share the details elsewhere, choose Help → Copy Diagnostics. It holds YapYap's version and install channel, Electron and Chromium versions, your operating system, the graphics mode and a GPU summary, and the most recent log lines. Log lines are redacted before they are written: phone numbers, email addresses, tokens and your home folder never appear, and YapYap never logs message content. Read it before you share it.

If YapYap is slow and the log does not say why, choose Help → Record a Performance Trace…. After you agree and choose where to save it, YapYap records for 10 seconds where its time goes, so do whatever is slow during that time. The trace holds the addresses of the pages and files YapYap loads, but no messages, memory dumps or screenshots. It opens in the Perfetto trace viewer, and YapYap sends it nowhere; attach it to a bug report only if you choose to.