Using the AUR with yay

The Arch User Repository is a community collection of build recipes (PKGBUILDs) covering nearly every Linux application ever ported. On AcreetionOS, yay automates fetching, building and updating them.

Install yay once

sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel git yay

Daily use

yay -S google-chrome         # build & install an AUR package
yay -Syu                     # update system AND AUR packages together
yay -Sua                     # update only AUR packages
yay -Ss discord              # search repos + AUR at once
yay -Ps                      # print system health summary
yay accepts all pacman flags. If you know pacman, you know yay.

Staying safe

AUR packages are user-submitted build scripts, not officially vetted binaries:

  1. Read the PKGBUILD when yay offers to review it — at least skim for anything odd (curl to random hosts, writing outside $srcdir…​).

  2. Prefer popular, well-maintained entries (check votes and last-updated on aur.archlinux.org).

  3. Build failures are normal after upstream changes — check comments on the AUR page before filing issues.

When something won’t build

Most AUR breakage is a missing dependency or outdated source URL:

yay -S <package> --editmenu     # tweak the PKGBUILD before building
yay -G <package>                # just download the recipe into ./package

If the app also exists on Flathub, Flatpak is often the lower-friction fallback.