The volatile components of yak butter were isolated by solvent-assisted flavour evaporation (SAFE), simultaneous distillation extraction (SDE; dichloromethane and diethyl ether as solvent, respectively) and headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME; CAR/PDMS, PDMS/DVB and DVB/CAR/PDMS fibre extraction, respectively) and were analysed by GC/MS. A total of 83 volatile components were identified under six different conditions, including 28 acids, 12 esters, 11 ketones, 10 lactones, 10 alcohols, 4 other compounds, 2 aldehydes, 2 unsaturated aldehydes, 1 furan, 1 sulphur-containing compound, 1 unsaturated alcohol and 1 unsatruated ketone. Among them, 51 were identified by SAFE, 58 by SDE (45 with dichloromethane as solvent and 41 with diethyl ether as solvent) and 40 by HS-SPME (26 with CAR/PDMS; 26 with PDMS/DVB and 32 with DVB/CAR/PDMS). Three pretreatment methods were compared to show that the volatile components obtained using different methods varied greatly, both in terms of categories and in content. Therefore, a multi-pretreatment method should be adopted, together with GC/MS. A total of 25 aroma-active compounds were detected by gas chromatography-olfactometry, among which 20 aroma-active compounds were found by SDE (14 with dichloromethane as solvent and 14 with diethyl ether as solvent) and 17 by SAFE.