Aperture
v1.39.0 · native on macOS

A close look at PostgreSQL and SQLite.

Aperture is a dense, keyboard-driven database client in a native window. Browse a schema, edit rows in place, read a query plan, and send it all in one transaction you reviewed first.

Download for macOS Read the code
engines
PostgreSQL · SQLite
platform
macOS 12+
store
SQLCipher 4
built in
Flutter
Aperture showing the orders table filtered and sorted, with an edited cell, a deleted row and a queued insert
01 The grid

Edit like a spreadsheet. Commit like a DBA.

Double-click a cell and an editor built for its type opens on it. Changes stage in memory, painted where they will land, until you review them and send the batch as a single transaction.

Filter, sort, page. Staged changes are painted where they will land.

Aperture showing the orders table filtered and sorted, with an edited cell, a deleted row and a queued insert
The timestamptz cell picker open over a cell: segmented date and time, quick actions, and a calendar
The pending-changes review listing an UPDATE, a DELETE and an INSERT before they run in one transaction

Type-aware editors

Calendars for dates, HH:MM:SS segments for time and timetz, a toggle for bool, live-highlighted JSON. NULL and DEFAULT are one click, and greyed out where the schema forbids them.

Exactly one row, or nothing

Rows are addressed by ctid on Postgres and rowid on SQLite. A statement that touches anything but one row rolls the whole batch back instead of guessing.

Follow the keys

Foreign-key columns carry a ↗. Click through to the referenced row, filtered, and step back with ⌘[ — history covers every tab switch, filter and sort.

Clauses, not dialogs

One line each for WHERE, SELECT and ORDER, with SQL highlighting. Click headers for multi-column sorts. Filter by any cell's value from its menu.

Every type has a colour

Cells are tinted by what they hold, so a column of timestamps reads differently from a column of totals before you read a single digit — and NULL never looks like the string 'NULL'.

  • number 48,213
  • text 'shipped'
  • bool true
  • uuid 9f2c…e41a
  • time 2026-10-04
  • json {"items": 3}
  • foreign key ↗ customer_id
  • null NULL
02 The editor

Scripts in. Statements out.

A real multi-line editor with schema-fed autocomplete and a ▶ beside every statement. ⌘ ↵ runs the one under the caret; ⌘ ⇧ ↵ runs them all, in order.

10k row cap on a bare select
400ms autosave debounce
500 statements in the log
The SQL editor with a two-statement script, the caret statement highlighted, and its results below

A splitter that reads Postgres the way Postgres does.

Statements are split client-side, then sent one by one — so the extended-query protocol's “cannot insert multiple commands” never reaches you. Single- and double-quoted strings, E'…' escapes, $$ … $$ and $tag$ … $tag$ bodies, line and block comments: a semicolon inside any of them is just a character.

  • A bare SELECT without LIMIT is capped at 10,000 rows, and the grid says when it was.
  • Every query autosaves to the connection and survives a restart in the sidebar.
  • Results export to CSV or Markdown — a file, streamed with a cancel button, or the clipboard.
three statements · not five 
-- Both survive the splitter: dollar-quoted bodies and E'' strings
create function touch() returns trigger as $$
begin
  new.updated_at := now();  -- not a statement boundary
  return new;
end $$ language plpgsql;

select E'it\'s fine'; select 1;
03 Query plans

EXPLAIN, explained.

The plan as a tree of cards, each with its share of the time as a bar. Then a rule pass reads it the way you would at 2 a.m. and says what it sees.

An EXPLAIN ANALYZE plan as a tree of timed nodes, with advice about a sequential scan
What the rule pass looks for

  • Sequential scans

    A full read of a big table behind a selective filter — the index you meant to have.

  • Sorts that spill

    work_mem ran out mid-sort and the rest went to disk.

  • Estimate mismatches

    The planner expected one row count and got another; stale statistics, usually.

  • Batched hashes

    A hash table that didn't fit in memory and was built in passes.

04 Credentials & safety

Nothing you'd mind losing your laptop with.

Connections, saved queries and history live in one SQLCipher-encrypted file. Passwords can stay out of it entirely.

The store store.sqlite

Everything persisted is one SQLite file under Application Support, keyed with SQLCipher 4 — a wrong passphrase fails on the first read, and any SQLCipher tool can open it with the right one.

The passphrase can be remembered in your login Keychain, so the app unlocks with the Mac.

Password commands $SHELL -l -c

Instead of a password, give a connection a shell command. It runs through your login shell on every connect, and its output is the password — 1Password, pass, Vault, whatever you already use.

password command 
op read "op://Private/atlas-prod/password"
The clause gate validateClauseSnippet

The WHERE, SELECT and ORDER fields take free SQL by design — and refuse a second statement before anything is concatenated.

1=1; drop table orders → refused

Connection health every 30s

A quiet keepalive notices a dropped socket. You get a reconnect banner that keeps your tabs and your place, not a trip back to the welcome screen.

Auto-refresh pauses itself while edits are staged.

05 Keyboard

Your hands stay put.

⌘ K fuzzy-finds tables, open tabs, saved queries, connections and commands from one box.

The command palette searching for “ord”, matching tables, an open tab and a command
Shortcuts ⌘ = command
  • Jump to any table, tab, query or command ⌘ K
  • Run the statement under the caret ⌘ ↵
  • Run the whole script ⌘ ⇧ ↵
  • Back through tabs, filters and sorts ⌘ [
  • Forward again ⌘ ]
  • New query tab ⌘ N
  • Refresh the table ⌘ R
  • Activity log — every statement sent ⌘ L
  • Close the tab ⌘ W
06 Install

Download, drag, open.

Every release is a DMG on GitHub, built by CI from the tagged commit. Install it once; after that it updates itself through Sparkle, checking every update's signature first. It's free and MIT-licensed, and it needs macOS 12 or later.

Download Aperture.dmg Release notes
  1. 01

    Download the DMG

    From the latest release on GitHub. One universal build for Apple silicon and Intel.

  2. 02

    Drag it to Applications

    Open the disk image and drop Aperture on the Applications shortcut beside it.

  3. 03

    Open it

    Every release is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens like any other app — no Gatekeeper detour.

Or build it from source

Needs Flutter (stable) and a full Xcode install — the Command Line Tools alone are not enough.

terminal · zsh 
git clone https://github.com/JWo1F/aperture.git
cd aperture
flutter pub get
tool/make_dmg.sh   # → dist/Aperture-<version>.dmg