MyDBDesk

1. The main window at a glance

When you open MyDBDesk you'll see three areas:

• Toolbar (top) — buttons for managing connections, starting a new query, and (on the right) 🖴 Local Server and ⓘ About.
• Navigation tree (left) — your saved servers, and their databases and tables.
• Work area (right) — a row of tabs that change what you see: Browse, Structure, Designer, SQL, AI, Insert, Export, Import, Operations, Privileges, and Status.
• Status bar (bottom) — shows what's happening and which server you're using.

Toolbar buttons turn on and off to match the situation — for example, Connect is only available when you've selected a server you're not yet connected to.

You work by selecting something on the left (a server, database, or table) and then choosing a tab on the right.

2. Connecting to a server

Add a connection

1. Click ＋ New in the toolbar.
2. Fill in the connection details:
   • Name — a friendly label, e.g. “Local” or “Production”.
   • Host — the server address (for a database on your own computer this is usually 127.0.0.1).
   • Port — usually 3306.
   • User and Password — your database login.
   • Database (optional) — a database to open automatically.
   • SSL mode — the encryption setting for the connection (see below).
   • CA cert (optional) — a certificate file, only needed for the verified SSL modes.
3. Click Test Connection to check it works.
4. Click Save.

Your connection now appears in the navigation tree. Your password is encrypted and stored on your own device.

SSL modes

• None — no encryption (fine for a database on your own computer).
• Preferred — encrypt if the server supports it.
• Required — only connect if the connection can be encrypted.
• VerifyCA / VerifyFull — also check the server's certificate against the CA certificate file you provide.

Connect, edit, remove

• Select a server and click 🔌 Connect. Its databases appear underneath it.
• ✎ Edit changes the selected connection's details.
• 🗑 Remove deletes the saved connection.
• ⏏ Disconnect closes the selected server's connection.

You can also right-click in the navigation tree to get the same actions (create, connect, disconnect, edit, remove, refresh) in a menu. Options that don't apply to what you clicked are greyed out.

You can connect to more than one server at once. Whichever item you click in the tree becomes the active one, and the bottom-right of the status bar shows which server you're currently working with.

Set up a local server (no install needed)

Don't have a database server yet? MyDBDesk can run one for you.

1. Click 🖴 Local Server in the toolbar.
2. Click ⬇ Download & Start — the app downloads a portable MariaDB (about 100 MB, once) and starts it on your PC, listening only on 127.0.0.1.
3. A “Local MariaDB” connection is added to the tree and connected automatically — you can start creating databases and tables right away.

From the same window you can Stop the server, change its port or data folder, or open the data folder. Your databases live in a normal folder on your PC and stay there even if you uninstall the app.

3. Browsing data

1. Expand a server, then a database, to see its tables.
2. Click a table. The Browse tab shows its rows.

Useful controls:

• ◀ Prev / Next ▶ move between pages of rows.
• ⟳ reloads the current page.
• Filter — type a condition in the WHERE box (e.g. status = 'active') and press Enter or Apply to show only matching rows; Clear removes it.
• Sort — click a column header to sort by that column (click again to reverse). Filtering and sorting run on the server, so they cover the whole table, not just the page you're looking at.
• The bar at the bottom shows which rows you're viewing and the total count.
• While the table loads, a spinner appears. If the table has no rows, the grid shows a “This table has no rows” message.

4. Editing data

The Browse grid is editable when the table has a primary key (a column that uniquely identifies each row). If it doesn't, the grid is read-only to keep your data safe.

To make changes:

1. Edit a cell — double-click it and type a new value.
2. Add a row — type into the empty row at the bottom of the grid.
3. Delete rows — select one or more rows and click 🗑 Delete row(s).
4. Click 💾 Save to apply all your changes to the database.
5. Click ↶ Revert to discard unsaved changes.

Adding a single row with a form

The Insert tab gives you a form built from the table's columns:

• Type a value for each field.
• Tick NULL to store an empty (null) value.
• Leave a field blank to let the database fill in its default (handy for auto-numbered ID columns).
• Click ＋ Insert row.

5. Designing tables

Viewing structure

Select a table and open the Structure tab to see:

• Columns — names, types, whether they allow empty values, defaults, primary key and auto-increment flags.
• Indexes — including which columns they cover and whether they're unique.
• Foreign keys — links to other tables.
• The full table definition at the bottom.

Changing columns and indexes

On the Structure tab:

• Columns: ＋ Add, ✎ Modify (change a column's type), or 🗑 Drop.
• Indexes: ＋ Add (choose the column(s) and whether it's unique) or 🗑 Drop.

Creating and removing tables and databases

Open the Operations tab. The available actions depend on what you've selected in the tree:

• Create database… — make a new, empty database.
• Create table… — opens a designer where you add as many columns as you like, setting each one's name, type, whether it allows empty values, primary key, auto-increment, and default.
• Rename / Truncate / Drop table — rename a table, empty it of all rows, or delete it entirely.
• Drop database — delete a database and everything in it.

Visual ER diagram (Designer tab)

The Designer tab shows your database as an entity-relationship diagram — table boxes with their columns, and lines for the foreign-key relationships between them. Select a database (or any table in it) and open Designer.

What you can do:

• Arrange the layout — drag a table by its coloured header to move it. Your arrangement is saved automatically per database, so it looks the same next time. Use Auto-arrange to reset to a tidy grid, or Save layout to save on demand.
• Pan and zoom — drag an empty part of the canvas to pan; use the － / ＋ buttons (or hold Ctrl and scroll the mouse wheel) to zoom.
• Create a table — click ＋ New table… to open the table designer; the new table appears on the canvas.
• Create a relationship (foreign key) — drag from the small dot on the right of a column onto another table's column. Confirm, and the link is created. (The usual rules apply: the two columns must be compatible and the target must be a key.)
• Edit a table — double-click a table's header to jump to its columns in the Structure tab.

6. Running SQL

The SQL tab is a full editor for writing your own statements.

• Type your SQL — the editor shows line numbers and colour syntax highlighting.
• Click ▶ Run or press F5. If you've selected part of the text, only the selection runs — handy for running one statement out of several.
• Pick the Database the query runs against from the drop-down in the toolbar.
• Click ■ Stop to cancel a query that's taking too long.
• Results appear in the grid; messages and timings appear in the bar below.

Query history

Every statement you run is remembered:

• Use the history drop-down in the SQL toolbar to pick a recent statement and load it back into the editor.
• Your history is kept between sessions, so it's still there next time you open the app.

You can also click 🗒 New Query in the main toolbar at any time to jump to the SQL tab.

7. The AI assistant

The ✨ AI tab is a built-in assistant that helps you understand your database and write SQL. It runs entirely on your own PC — your questions, your schema, and your data are never sent to any server or cloud service.

First use: download a model

The assistant uses a small AI model that downloads once.

1. Open the AI tab. If no model is present yet, you'll see a ⬇ Download button showing the model and its size.
2. (Optional) Use the drop-down to choose a model first:
   • Qwen2.5-Coder 1.5B (recommended) — lighter and faster (~1.8 GB).
   • Phi-4-mini (quality) — larger and a bit slower (~4.7 GB).
3. Click Download. A progress bar shows how it's going; you can Stop it.

The download is one-time — after that the model loads from your PC.

Using it

• Chat — type a question in the box at the bottom and press Send (or Enter). Replies stream in as they're written. The assistant knows the tables in the database you've selected, so you can ask things like “what does the orders table store?” or “how would I list customers who placed an order?”.
• Explain query in editor — explains the SQL currently in the SQL tab, in plain English.
• Describe this table — pick a table in the tree, then click this for a summary of its columns, keys, and what it appears to store.
• Stop cancels a reply that's taking too long. Clear empties the chat.

Good to know

The first request after opening the app can take a little longer (around half a minute) while the model loads into memory; after that it's quicker.

8. Exporting data

The Export tab saves a table (or a whole database) to a file.

1. Select a table (or a whole database) in the tree, then open Export.
2. Choose a format:
   • SQL — statements that can recreate the data (and, optionally, the table itself — tick Include CREATE TABLE). This is the only option when exporting a whole database.
   • CSV — a comma-separated file you can open in a spreadsheet.
   • JSON — structured data for use in other tools.
3. Then choose how to export:
   • ⤓ Export — generates the result into the text box on screen so you can read or copy it. Best for smaller tables.
   • ⬇ Export to file… — pick a file and the data is written straight to it, with a progress bar. This is the right choice for large tables: it stays fast, doesn't tie up the rest of the app (you can switch to other tabs while it runs), and you can press Cancel to stop.

9. Importing data

The Import tab brings data in. You can run SQL you typed, or run a file.

Run SQL you typed

• Type or paste SQL into the editor and click ▶ Run editor SQL.

Run a file (.sql or .csv)

1. Click 📂 Choose file… and pick a .sql or .csv file. (Very large files aren't loaded into the editor — they run straight from disk.)
2. For a CSV, set the target table in the box that appears.
3. Click ▶ Run from file.
4. For a CSV, a column-matching window opens — each CSV column is lined up with a table column (matches by name are pre-filled). Adjust any, or set a column to (skip), then click Import.

10. Managing users and privileges

Open the Privileges tab to manage who can access the server.

• ⟳ Refresh — reload the list of users.
• Select a user to see their current grants on the right.
• ＋ Create user… — add a new user (name, host, password).
• 🔑 Grant… — give a user privileges. Choose the privileges and the scope: everything, a single database, or a single table.
• ⊘ Revoke… — take privileges away, using the same picker.
• 🗑 Drop user — remove a user.

11. Server status and activity

The Status tab shows what the server is doing. It has three sub-tabs:

• Status variables — live counters and statistics.
• Server variables — the server's configuration settings.
• Process list — connections and queries running right now. Select one and click ✖ Kill selected to end it.

Use the Filter box at the top to quickly find a particular status value or setting by name. Click ⟳ Refresh status to update the figures.

12. Tips and good habits

• Save often when editing in the Browse grid — changes aren't sent to the server until you press Save.
• Use Test Connection before saving a new connection to catch typos in the host or password.
• Confirmations are there to help — read the message before clicking Yes on a Drop or Truncate.
• Working with several servers? Just click in the tree to switch; the status bar always tells you which server is active.
• Lost a query? Check the SQL tab's history drop-down — it remembers your recent statements across sessions.
• Big export or import? A progress bar covers just that tab — the rest of the app keeps working, and you can press Cancel at any time.
• A spinner means MyDBDesk is loading something (a table, a query result, or the list of databases).
• No database server yet? Use 🖴 Local Server to download and run one on your own PC in a couple of clicks.
• The AI stays on your PC — nothing you ask it, and none of your data, leaves your computer. Even so, review any SQL it writes before you run it.

13. Quick reference

About MyDBDesk

Click ⓘ About in the toolbar to see the app logo, the version and build number, and a link to the MyDBDesk website. If you ever need to report a problem, the version and build number are useful to include.