Google Chrome window can appear as a normal on-screen window in CoreGraphics/AppleScript while `yabai` reports it invisible, untitled, non-AX, and non-floating

[nostitos]

Environment

• macOS 26.4 (25E241)
• yabai 7.1.17
• Google Chrome 146.0.7680.154

Summary

I hit a case where one specific Google Chrome window is clearly a normal visible top-level window, but yabai reports it with blank title/role, no AX reference, is-visible = false, and is-floating = false.

Other Chrome windows from the same process on the same space/display are reported normally by yabai.

What I see

The problematic Chrome window is visibly on screen and frontmost. Chrome itself reports it as a normal window with bounds:

osascript -e 'tell application "Google Chrome" to get {title, bounds} of window 1'

Output:

G-Space "Bicycle Birthday Stream" - PART 2 - YouTube 🔊, 1701, 139, 3500, 1316

CoreGraphics also sees the same window server id as a normal on-screen layer-0 Chrome window:

swift -e 'import Foundation; import CoreGraphics; let info = CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo([.optionOnScreenOnly, .excludeDesktopElements], kCGNullWindowID) as? [[String:Any]] ?? []; for row in info { let owner = row[kCGWindowOwnerName as String] as? String ?? ""; if owner != "Google Chrome" { continue }; let id = (row[kCGWindowNumber as String] as? NSNumber)?.intValue ?? -1; let name = (row[kCGWindowName as String] as? String) ?? ""; let layer = (row[kCGWindowLayer as String] as? NSNumber)?.intValue ?? -1; let alpha = (row[kCGWindowAlpha as String] as? NSNumber)?.doubleValue ?? -1; let bounds = row[kCGWindowBounds as String] ?? ""; print("id=\(id) layer=\(layer) alpha=\(alpha) name=\(name) bounds=\(bounds)") }'

Relevant line:

id=602 layer=0 alpha=1.0 name=G-Space "Bicycle Birthday Stream" - PART 2 - YouTube 🔊 bounds={ Height = 1177; Width = 1799; X = 1701; Y = 139; }

But yabai reports the same window id like this:

yabai -m query --windows | jq '.[] | select(.id==602)'

Output:

{
  "id": 602,
  "pid": 707,
  "app": "Google Chrome",
  "title": "",
  "role": "",
  "subrole": "",
  "frame": { "x": 1701.0000, "y": 139.0000, "w": 1799.0000, "h": 1177.0000 },
  "display": 1,
  "space": 1,
  "can-move": false,
  "can-resize": false,
  "has-focus": false,
  "has-ax-reference": false,
  "is-visible": false,
  "is-minimized": false,
  "is-hidden": false,
  "is-floating": false
}

At the same time, other Chrome windows from the same app/pid on the same space/display are reported normally, for example:

yabai -m query --windows | jq '.[] | select(.id==2808)'

{
  "id": 2808,
  "pid": 707,
  "app": "Google Chrome",
  "title": "I Made Claude and Codex Argue Until My Code Plan Was Actually Good | Aseem Shrey - Part of group Review / Temp - Google Chrome",
  "role": "AXWindow",
  "subrole": "AXStandardWindow",
  "display": 1,
  "space": 1,
  "can-move": true,
  "can-resize": true,
  "has-ax-reference": true,
  "is-visible": true,
  "is-floating": true
}

Expected

For window 602, I would expect yabai to expose the same basic state as the window server / Chrome itself:

• non-empty title
• role = AXWindow
• subrole = AXStandardWindow
• has-ax-reference = true
• is-visible = true
• correct floating state (or at least not an obviously contradictory one)

Actual

For that one Chrome window only, yabai returns a blank/limited-looking window state even though the window is clearly present and normal on screen.

Notes

• This seems to be a one-off pathological window rather than a global Chrome problem.
• Other Chrome windows in the same session are reported correctly.
• I reduced the problematic window down to a normal single-tab window and still saw the same mismatch.