What causes "Connection closed before receiving reply" in sxyazi/yazi?

Verify Yazi is still running (`pgrep yazi`) and retry the command.

Connection closed before receiving reply

Error message

Connection closed before receiving reply

What it means

`Dds::ask` loops reading reply lines and returns on the first matching custom reply; if the stream ends (EOF) before any matching reply arrives, it bails with `Connection closed before receiving reply`. This means the peer disconnected or never answered within the connection's lifetime.

Source

Thrown at yazi-cli/src/dds/exec.rs:69

		drop(writer);

		while let Ok(Some(line)) = lines.next_line().await {
			match line.split(',').next() {
				Some("hey") => {
					if let Ok(Ember::Hey(hey)) = Payload::from_str(&line).map(|p| p.body) {
						Self::ensure_version(Some(&hey.version))?;
						Self::ensure_ability(&hey.peers, kind, receiver)?;
					}
				}
				Some(kind) if kind == reply_kind => match Payload::from_str(&line)?.body {
					Ember::Custom(body) => return Ok(body.data),
					_ => bail!("Expected custom payload of kind `{reply_kind}`"),
				},
				_ => {}
			}
		}

		bail!("Connection closed before receiving reply")
	}
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 5f901b886b)

Solutions

Verify Yazi is still running (`pgrep yazi`) and retry the command.
Check Yazi logs (`YAZI_LOG=debug`) for a crash or handler panic around the request time.
Confirm `YAZI_PID` points to a live instance, then re-run the `ya` command.

Defensive patterns

Strategy: retry

Validate before calling

if !yazi_running() { return Err("yazi is not running; start it before sending messages"); }

Try / catch

match Dds::ask(...).await {
  Err(e) if e.to_string() == "Connection closed before receiving reply" => {
    if yazi_running() { retry_with_backoff(2) } else { eprintln!("yazi exited mid-request") }
  }
  other => other,
}

Prevention

Confirm the target yazi process is alive before long-running requests.
Avoid restarting or killing yazi while `ya` requests are in flight.
Check yazi logs for panics/crashes if disconnects recur.

When it happens

Trigger: Yazi exits or crashes while `ya` waits for the reply; the connection drops (network/IPC socket closed); the peer never emits the expected `reply_kind` line before closing.

Common situations: Target Yazi instance killed mid-request; long-running requests outliving a Yazi restart; `ya pub` sent to a receiver that shuts down before replying.

Understand the failure class

Connection failures: ECONNREFUSED, ECONNRESET, and friends — why connections get refused, reset, or dropped.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of sxyazi/yazi@5f901b886b (2026-09-02). Data as JSON: /api/errors/713f9720f37ecd87. Report an issue: GitHub.