Back in the day, when it comes to working with relational databases, especially PostgreSQL, we didn’t have many choices.

You might have used pgAdmin, an official tool that was built by the team behind PostgreSQL, or some reputable tools such as Navicat or SequelPro… we tried them all. Each tool has its own unique feature kit that made it standout but we didn’t seem to be satisfied [Warning — we’re going a just little bit picky here].

  • Some tools take so much time to start-up, poor performance or eating RAM.
  • Some tools make you feel like being in the 90s with the outdated interface that doesn’t allow you to view one row of data without a series of 3 or 4 clicks, let alone slow response.
  • Some other support only one driver.
  • Out of them, SequelPro seems to be the best but it’s limited to MySQL only and the development almost stopped (they planned to support PostgreSQL nearly 10 years ago already).

To be fair, those tools are quite feature rich and stable, so as long as you don’t feel annoyed, it’s good to go. But for us, we wanted something more, something far better than that.

So we started looking for a perfect database tool. We needed something that is built native, has modern UI and runs fast like a Lambo. Simple as that.

After performing several searches on Google, we gave up. There was no such a thing. Frustrated, we decided to build our own native tool and started with relational databases.

So our initial build was:

  • A native tool with high performance, neat and fast :D
  • A modern & simple UI that supports multiple windows and tabs, and of course, in full-retina.
  • A powerful query designer with highlight syntax and autocomplete.
  • Supporting most of the relational databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Amazon Redshift, SQLite, MariaDB…
  • Extendable, because we don’t want to include everything in one tool.

Then we gave it the name TablePlus. It’s been 4 months since the day we released the first version and we’ve made a lot of changes along the way. Perhaps the biggest and most recent one was plugin system — a feature that allows TablePlus to be customized and extended beyond the expectation with Javascript.

Let’s take a look at some screenshots below to have a better understanding

True native built and optimization that enables high capability of performance and saving RAM

native

Modern & simple UI

tableplus-connections

Workspace supports multiple tabs

tableplus-workspace

A full-dark theme pleasure your eyes.

tableplus-darkmode

A powerful SQL editor with full features:

  • Auto highlight.
  • Autosuggestion.
  • Split pane.
  • Favorite and History.

tableplus-features

Modern shortcuts that will keep your hands on the keyboard

tableplus-shortcuts

Plugin system (developing)

Now, you can be able to write new features to work with database without waiting for us to develop (export charts, pretty json, import data, export data…).

tableplus-plugins

We know there are a lot ahead of us but we’re grateful that TablePlus has received a lot of support from our fellow developers around the world during the last 4 months. We’re working hard every day to bring a new hope for relational database tools.