DB Browser for SQLite: cross platform, reasonably sized, versatile
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/29
I found [Wayback/Archive] DB Browser for SQLite via [Wayback/Archive] In z’n leren frakske | Tech45 Podcast (thanks [Wayback/Archive] Toon Van de Putte (@toonvandeputte)!).
It is a standalone reasonably sized database browser for the single-process SQLite database (which is itself a file storage replacement for highly table structured data, see below).
With SQLite gaining more and more popularity in standalone application usage (you can even host it inside a web browser session!), I bump in it more often to fix things (more on that in a future blog post), which means that besides the standard console support in SQLite, having a versatile browser is really useful.
DB Browser for SQLite, or in short sqlitebrowser, fulfills that need better than I expected. It’s cross-platform so it works on Mac OS, Windows and Linux (and sort of on WSL2 on Windows, see links below).
Hopefully I can show you how I used it in future blog-posts. For now, and for my link archive, below are just some links to get started.
Oh and the comment: as always with files containing structured data that is randomly accessed you should be really careful when opening them over file-shares or virtual drives like cloud storage.
- [Wayback/Archive] sqlitebrowser/sqlitebrowser: Official home of the DB Browser for SQLite (DB4S) project. Previously known as “SQLite Database Browser” and “Database Browser for SQLite”. Website at: [Wayback/Archive] DB Browser for SQLite
- [Wayback/Archive] Releases · sqlitebrowser/sqlitebrowser with at the time of writing these formats:
Note the Windows version embeds
sqlite3.dll, so does not heed a separate SQLite installation. This probably holds for the Linux and MacOS versions as well. - Via [Wayback/Archive] chocolatey sqlite3 – Google Search:
Yes, SQLite can run inside your Web Browser too (heck, Chromium based browsers store most of their state with it), even from web-page, in the past mainly via Web SQL (now deprecated) and now usually sql.js (most via [Wayback/Archive] sql.js – Google Search):
- [Wayback/Archive] sql-js/sql.js: A javascript library to run SQLite on the web.
- [Wayback/Archive] sql.js API Documentation Home
- [Wayback/Archive] sql.js SQLite compiled to JavaScript
sql.js is a javascript SQL database. It allows you to create a relational database and query it entirely in the browser. You can try it in [Wayback/Archive] this online demo. It uses a [Wayback/Archive] virtual database file stored in memory, and thus doesn’t persist the changes made to the database. However, it allows you to import any existing sqlite file, and to export the created database as a [Wayback/Archive] JavaScript typed array.
sql.js uses [Wayback/Archive] emscripten to compile [Wayback/Archive] SQLite to webassembly (or to javascript code for compatibility with older browsers). It includes [Wayback/Archive] contributed math and string extension functions.
sql.js can be used like any traditional JavaScript library. If you are building a native application in JavaScript (using Electron for instance), or are working in node.js, you will likely prefer to use [Wayback/Archive] a native binding of SQLite to JavaScript. A native binding will not only be faster because it will run native code, but it will also be able to work on database files directly instead of having to load the entire database in memory, avoiding out of memory errors and further improving performances.
Oh, if you run SQLite, be sure you run a version newer than 3.39.2, as at the time of writing the below security issue got resolved, I checked a few bits of software and all had much older SQLite libraries (likely not just because of laziness: SQLite has had few serious vulnerabilities over the past decades). The vulnerability was [Wayback/Archive] Stranger Strings: An exploitable flaw in SQLite | Trail of Bits Blog (via [Wayback/Archive] @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net on Twitter: “Ouch. Exploitable flaw in #SQLite that was hiding for 22 years. But also: fixed in a week. …”).
Some people got sqlitebrowser to work on WSL2, but please note that SQLite does not really like the virtual file system that many WSL2 configurations use, see:
- [Wayback/Archive] wsl2 sqlitebrowser – Google Search
- [Wayback/Archive] WSL2 Instructions · Issue #2209 · sqlitebrowser/sqlitebrowser
- [Wayback/Archive] SQLite Browser fails to open a DB inside a wsl2 installation · Issue #2142 · sqlitebrowser/sqlitebrowser
…
vbrozik commented on 2021-12-30:
Could you please fix the SQLite Browser to show an error message when opening a database on a
\\wsl$\file system fails?DB Browser for SQLite Version 3.12.2 still fails silently.GusSand commented on 2022-10-06:
October 2022, Still fails silently on WSL2 Ubuntu. Windows 10
- [Wayback/Archive] visual studio code – Is there a way to explore a SQLite DB visually (GUI) via WSL2? – Stack Overflow (thanks [Wayback/Archive] Anil George, [Wayback/Archive] Steve Cruz, [Wayback/Archive] Guillaume Renoult and [Wayback/Archive] Isaac Pak):
Q
I run a remote Linux instance for my development environment on Visual Studio Code via WSL2. On the bash terminal, I use sqlite3 to access my SQLite DB.Is there a way to view my DB in a GUI application and access the DB from Linux instance itself – the way we run VS Code? And not via a Windows application accessing the\\$wsl\filesystem.A
…
You can use the SQLite by alexcvzz plugin for Visual Studio Code it allows you to check the data contained in the tables and run queries. It is also possible to see the SQL queries that generated each table.
C
This extension didn’t work for me, but this extension did.
…
@IsaacPak in my case it didn’t work until I installed
sqlite3in WSL2:sudo apt install sqlite3
Related blog posts on the power of SQLite:
-
- Happy Day of the Programmer – and remember what SQLite is about…
“SQLite does not compete with client/server databases. SQLite competes with fopen().”
- SQL Fiddle | A tool for easy online testing and sharing of database problems and their solutions.
- browser – Clearing old browsing data in Chrome instead of newer data – Super User
- Public database servers
- A signal of the future WebAssembly/emscripten is giving us: a database served on a static web page
- “Towards Inserting One Billion Rows in SQLite Under A Minute”
- Database fiddle sites
- Happy Day of the Programmer – and remember what SQLite is about…
- TIL you can run SQL queries directly against CSV files as a one-liner using the default sqlite3 command line utility
- Via isotopp: Yes, I can connect to a DB in CSS
- s3-ocr: Extract text from PDF files stored in an S3 bucket
--jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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