Connections overview

For: everyone.

Every connection you save lives in the QueryDeck sidebar. This page covers the layout, color-coding, and the safety net that keeps you from running a DELETE on production by accident.

The sidebar shows every saved connection grouped by status:

Connected — green dot, the connection is active.
Saved — no dot, the connection is ready to open.
Recently opened — pinned to the top of the list for fast switching.

Click a connection to open it. Cmd+click opens it in a new tab so you can compare two databases side by side.

Groups and colors

Each connection has a color. Pick one when you save the connection, or change it later from the connection editor.

The convention we recommend:

Color	Use for
Red	Production. Anything you don't want to break.
Orange	Staging or pre-production.
Green	Local dev, sandbox, throwaway databases.
Blue	Read replicas, analytics warehouses.
Purple, pink, yellow	Whatever makes sense for your project.

The color appears in three places:

As a dot next to the connection name in the sidebar.
On the toolbar at the top of every query tab opened against that connection.
On the connection badge inside the query editor.

When you're in a red toolbar, you know to slow down before hitting Cmd+Return.

Touch ID gate

Connections marked as sensitive prompt for Touch ID every time you open them. To enable:

Open the connection editor.
Toggle "Require Touch ID to open" at the bottom.
Save.

The next time you click the connection in the sidebar, QueryDeck prompts for your fingerprint before it actually connects. If you decline or the Mac doesn't have Touch ID, the connection stays closed.

This is independent of your Mac's login. Touch ID here is a per-connection gate, not a session gate.

Reorder, duplicate, delete

Right-click any connection in the sidebar for the full menu:

Action	What it does
Edit	Reopen the connection editor for this connection
Duplicate	Create a copy with the same fields. Useful for staging vs production from one template.
Disconnect	Close active sessions without removing the connection
Delete	Remove the connection. The password is wiped from the Keychain at the same time.

Drag to reorder. The order is saved per machine.

Where are credentials stored?

Hosts, ports, usernames, and database names are saved in QueryDeck's local config. Passwords go into the macOS Keychain under com.querydeck.app. They never sit in plaintext on disk.

See Credentials and Keychain for the full security model.

What's next

PostgreSQL for Supabase, Neon, Railway, RDS, and self-hosted Postgres
MySQL for MySQL and MariaDB
SQLite for local files
SSL/TLS modes — what each mode means
SSH tunnels — connect through a bastion host