Skip to main content
A Live tab shows messages that flow past a connection instead of being stored: PostgreSQL NOTIFY, Redis Pub/Sub and new Kafka records. Each row has the time, the channel or topic and the payload. The tab reads on a connection of its own, so your query tabs and their transactions are never touched, and closing the tab closes that connection.

​
Turn it on

Live Messages is a module, off by default. Select Live Messages under Modules in Settings > Extensions. That adds Database > Live Messages…. Deselecting the checkbox removes the command and closes every Live tab.

​
Engine support

Other engines have no Live tab, Redshift, CockroachDB and PGlite included.

​
Start following

1

Open the sheet

Choose Database > Live Messages… on a connected PostgreSQL, Redis or Kafka connection. On Kafka, the topic open in the front tab is filled in.
2

Name the channels or topics

Separate names with commas. On Redis, the Patterns field takes glob patterns such as news.*.
3

Start

Click Listen, Subscribe or Follow. The new tab connects and starts listing messages, newest at the top.

​
Work with the list

  • Pause freezes the list. Messages keep arriving underneath, and the count of new ones shows beside the button. Resume shows them.
  • Clear empties the list.
  • The filter field matches the channel, the payload and the Kafka key.
  • Copy copies the selected rows, or every shown row when none is selected, as tab-separated text. Command-C does the same.
  • Export… saves the shown rows as a CSV file.
  • The tab keeps the newest 10,000 messages. Older ones are dropped as new ones arrive.
To send a test message, type the channel or topic and a payload in the bar at the bottom and click Send.

​
Dropped connections

When the connection drops, a Connection lost row marks the gap, and the tab connects and subscribes again on its own, waiting 1 second, then 2, then longer, up to 30 seconds between tries. Messages sent while it was down are not received, except on Kafka, where nothing is lost from the log but reading starts again at the end. A name that fails on the first try, such as a Kafka topic that does not exist, ends the tab with the error instead.

​
Engine notes

  • PostgreSQL: a channel name is an identifier, so Orders and orders are different channels, matching LISTEN "Orders". The payload limit is the server’s, 8000 bytes by default.
  • Redis: Cluster mode subscribes on one node, which receives every PUBLISH in the cluster. Sharded Pub/Sub (SSUBSCRIBE) is not followed. A second connection opens the first time you send, because a subscribed connection cannot run PUBLISH.
  • Kafka: the tab reads with plain fetches and no consumer group, so it never joins a group or moves committed offsets. A key or payload that is not valid UTF-8 shows as hex. The time is the record’s own timestamp.