diff --git a/Cargo.lock b/Cargo.lock
index 372604b1..97948805 100644
--- a/Cargo.lock
+++ b/Cargo.lock
@@ -1049,6 +1049,7 @@ dependencies = [
  "smithay-egui",
  "thiserror 2.0.18",
  "tiny-skia",
+ "tokio",
  "tracing",
  "tracing-journald",
  "tracing-subscriber",
diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index 3010ff90..6e3b03a6 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -77,6 +77,7 @@ xdg = "^3.0"
 xdg-user = "0.2.1"
 xkbcommon = "0.9"
 zbus = "5.14.0"
+tokio = { version = "1", features = ["rt-multi-thread"] }
 profiling = { version = "1.0" }
 rustix = { version = "1.1.4", features = ["process"] }
 rand = "0.10"
diff --git a/src/main.rs b/src/main.rs
index 7ae05991..ffa37236 100644
--- a/src/main.rs
+++ b/src/main.rs
@@ -1,6 +1,15 @@
 // SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-only
 
 fn main() {
+    // libcosmic-yoda enables zbus' `tokio` feature, so zbus 5.14 expects an
+    // ambient Tokio runtime via Handle::current(). cosmic-comp's loop is not
+    // async, so hold a runtime guard for the lifetime of run().
+    let runtime = tokio::runtime::Builder::new_multi_thread()
+        .enable_all()
+        .build()
+        .expect("failed to build tokio runtime");
+    let _guard = runtime.enter();
+
     if let Err(err) = cosmic_comp::run(Default::default()) {
         tracing::error!("Error occured in main(): {}", err);
         std::process::exit(1);