diff --git a/ui/desktop/electron-app/src/boundary-cli.js b/ui/desktop/electron-app/src/boundary-cli.js
index 2227687ed..e42255ea4 100644
--- a/ui/desktop/electron-app/src/boundary-cli.js
+++ b/ui/desktop/electron-app/src/boundary-cli.js
@@ -18,8 +18,10 @@ const escapeAndValidateBase62 = (str) => {
 };
 
 module.exports = {
+
   // Check boundary cli existence
   exists: () => Boolean(cliPath()),
+
   // Initiate connection and return output
   connect: (target_id, token, host_id) => {
     const addr = origin.origin;
@@ -33,13 +35,13 @@ module.exports = {
       `-target-id=${sanitized.target_id}`,
       `-token=${sanitized.token}`,
       `-addr=${addr}`,
-      '-format=json',
-      '--output-json-errors'
+      '-format=json'
     ];
 
     if (host_id) command.push(`-host-id=${sanitized.host_id}`)
     return spawnAsyncJSONPromise(command);
   },
+
   // Returns JSON-formatted version information from the CLI
   version: () => {
     const command = [ '-v' ];
@@ -54,4 +56,5 @@ module.exports = {
     return { gitRevision, versionNumber, formatted };
     return rawOutput;
   }
+
 }
diff --git a/ui/desktop/electron-app/src/spawn-promise.js b/ui/desktop/electron-app/src/spawn-promise.js
index ba08e2685..47afae96d 100644
--- a/ui/desktop/electron-app/src/spawn-promise.js
+++ b/ui/desktop/electron-app/src/spawn-promise.js
@@ -52,8 +52,10 @@ module.exports = {
       childProcess.stderr.on('data', (data) => {
         errorStream += data.toString();
         const jsonData = jsonify(errorStream);
-        const error = jsonData ? jsonData.error : undefined;
-        if (jsonData) reject(new Error(error));
+        if (jsonData) {
+          const error = jsonData.api_error || jsonData.error;
+          reject(new Error(error));
+        }
       });
     });
   },