If you are reading this then you are probably using pgAdmin as a tool to help in your day to day database management activities with PostgreSQL. But, did you know there are a variety of ways you can maximise your productivity by customising the pgAdmin workspace using the Preferences dialog’s various options? 

This article will show you some of the options for customising  the workspace using the Browser node of the Preferences tree control.

Display Panel

The display panel options are used to specify general display preferences.

• Auto-expand sole children: If this switch is set to True, when a treeview node is expanded and has just one child then the child node will be expanded automatically.
• Confirm before Close/Reset in object properties dialog?: If this switch is set to True, pgAdmin will warn if there are any unsaved changes to an object before closing the properties dialog. On user confirmation the dialog will close.
• Confirm on close or refresh?: If this switch is set to True, pgAdmin will prompt before close/refresh of the browser.
• Lock Layout: Users can lock the UI layout of the browser at different levels.
  • None: No locking of UI layout, Every panel is resizable and dockable.
  • Prevent docking: This will disable docking or undocking of panels, but allow resizing.
  • Full: This will disable resizing, docking/undocking of the panels.
• Object explorer tree state saving interval: The value in seconds is used as an interval to save the object explorer treeview state. A value of -1 will disable the treeview state saving functionality.
• Show empty object collections?: If this switch is set to False, then all object collections which are empty will be hidden from the browser tree.
• Show system objects?: if this switch is True, pgAdmin will display system objects such as system schemas or system columns in the tree control.
• Show template databases?: if this switch is True, pgAdmin will display template databases under database collection.

Keyboard Shortcuts Panel

You can configure the shortcuts for the main window navigation using the options shown in the keyboard shortcuts panel.

• These keyboard shortcuts will help navigate and control the main window easily and can help users save time.
• You can configure each shortcut by selecting the combination of modifier keys along with the alphabet keys.

Nodes Panel

The options shown in this panel allow you to show or hide different object types in the Browser tree control.

• This panel shows a list of database objects that you can slide the switch to show or hide the database object.
• This can help in increasing the speed of querying the system catalogs by reducing the number of object types displayed.
• Additionally, the display is simplified because only the object types you care about are displayed.

Object Breadcrumbs Panel

This panel is used to customise object breadcrumb related settings.

• Enable object breadcrumbs?: You can slide this switch to either show or hide the complete path of the object as a breadcrumb, displayed on object mouse hover.
• Show comment with object breadcrumbs?: You can slide this switch to either show or hide the comments of the object along with the object breadcrumb displayed on object mouse hover.

Processes Panel

This panel is used to customise Processes tab related settings.

• Process details/logs retention days: You can enter the number of days that process info and logs will be retained for, after which they will be cleared automatically.

Properties Panel

You can configure the Browser properties using this panel.

• Count rows if estimated less than: You can enter a value that will be used to perform a SELECT count(*), if the estimated number of rows in a selected table (as read from the table statistics) is below the specified limit. If the estimated number of rows is above the limit, the estimate will be shown unless the rows are explicitly counted (which can be expensive).
• Maximum job history rows: You can enter a value that will limit the number of rows to be shown on the statistics tab of the pgAgent jobs. The default value is 250.

Tab Settings Panel

While working on pgAdmin, we open various tabs related to different tasks. The default tab names and styling are useful for most people, but you can customise them if you prefer.

• Debugger tab title: You can provide any string with or without supported placeholders of their choice. If the title is blank then it will be reverted back to the default tab title.
• Dynamic tab size: You can slide this switch to True to make the tab size dynamic which means the size of tab will be dependent on the size of the title. The change will affect currently open tabs.
• Open in new browser tab: You can select multiple tools that will be opened in a new browser tab when invoked.
• PSQL tool tab title: You can provide any string with or without supported placeholders of their choice. If the title is blank then it will be reverted back to the default tab title.
• Query tool tab title: You can provide any string with or without supported placeholders of their choice. If the title is blank then it will be reverted back to the default tab title.
• View/Edit data tab title: You can provide any string with or without supported placeholders of their choice. If the title is blank then it will be reverted back to the default tab title.

Conclusion

One can customise the pgAdmin workspace by going to the various nodes of the Preferences dialog’s tree control in order to optimise the user interface to best meet your needs. In this article we saw how you can customise the workspace using the Browser node of the tree control and in subsequent articles we will cover further nodes.