Query Insights

Which queries you run most, which cost the most time, and which got slower

Query Insights needs a Starter license. Everything it shows is computed on your Mac from the query history already stored there. Nothing is uploaded.

Query history answers “what did I run”. Insights answers “what is worth my attention”. It reads the same local SQLite database and summarizes it.

Open it from Database > Query Insights. It opens as a tab, one per connection, and reuses the existing tab if you already have one open.

Query Insights: summary, activity chart, and the ranked panels below it

Queries Are Grouped by Shape

SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = 1 and SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = 2 are the same query run twice, not two queries run once. Insights strips the values out of every statement and groups by what is left:

Written	Counted as
WHERE id = 1 and WHERE id = 2	WHERE id = ?
IN (1, 2) and IN (1, 2, 3, 4)	IN (...)
VALUES (1, 'a') and VALUES (1, 'a'), (2, 'b')	VALUES (...)
select * from t and SELECT * FROM t	one shape
the same query with and without comments	one shape

This is the same idea as PostgreSQL’s pg_stat_statements and MySQL’s statement digest, so the numbers mean what they mean there.

Two things are deliberately not merged. Table and column names keep their capitalization, because on a case-sensitive server Orders and orders are different tables and merging them would report a wrong count. And numbers inside a name stay part of the name, so events_2025 and events_2026 are counted separately.

Each row shows the shape, not the literal query you ran. Copy Query and Load in Editor in the right-click menu give you the most recent real query in the group, values and all.

The Panels

Summary across the top: how many queries ran, what share failed, the average duration, and the total time spent waiting.

Activity charts queries per day, split into succeeded and failed. Ranges of two days or less are charted by hour instead.

Most Run ranks shapes by how many times they ran.

Slowest ranks by Total Time by default, which is what pg_stat_statements sorts by: it finds the query that actually costs you time, which is usually a quick query you run constantly rather than one slow query you ran once. Switch it to Average Time to find the query that is slow every single time. Average Time only lists shapes that ran at least 3 times, because the average of one run is just that run.

Got Slower compares the range you picked against the range immediately before it. Pick Last 7 Days and it compares against the 7 days before that. A shape is reported when all of these hold:

• it ran at least 5 times in both periods
• its average got at least 50% slower
• its average grew by at least 25 ms

Those floors are there because without them the panel reports noise. Ordinary variation in a query that runs hundreds of times a day will cross a 20% threshold regularly, and a query going from 1 ms to 2 ms has doubled without costing you anything. Only successful runs count, since a query that failed fast is not a query that got quicker.

Rows are ordered by the time the slowdown actually costs, so a query that got twice as slow and runs all day ranks above one that got ten times slower and runs twice.

Failures ranks shapes by how many times they failed, with the most recent error message for each.

Filtering

Control	What it does
Scope	This connection, or all connections
Source	Which parts of the app the queries came from
Date	Last hour, today, last 7 days, last 4 weeks, all time

Source defaults to My Queries, the SQL you wrote yourself. Turn on Table Browsing to see what the app sent while you clicked around, which is usually where the highest run counts hide. The sources are the same ones the history drawer uses.

Date defaults to Last 4 Weeks rather than All Time, because “got slower than before” needs a before to compare against.

There is no outcome filter, on purpose. Hiding failed queries would make the failure panel report that nothing ever fails.

Insights refreshes itself as you run queries. The refresh button is there for when you want it now.

What It Cannot Tell You

It only knows what your Mac recorded. Queries run before you installed TablePro, run by other people, or run while capture was paused are not in it. Queries pruned by your retention settings, 10,000 entries and 90 days by default, are gone too, so a long All Time range does not reach further back than retention allows.

Durations are measured by TablePro, from sending the query to getting the result. That includes network time and any SSH tunnel, so a query is “slower” here if your connection got slower, not only if the server did. For server-side timings see the Server Dashboard and EXPLAIN.