[deergomoo]

Heidi was the default option on our work machines a few years ago and it’s one of the buggiest pieces of software I’ve ever used.

Does it still lock up the entire UI if a query takes longer than five seconds to return results? Does it still pop up exception dialogs every ten minutes when it’s been open for longer than a few hours?

[creamyhorror]

HeidiSQL has its quirks and occasional rough edges, but it's certainly simpler and more straightforward to use than DBeaver, the other common free SQL client that is sometimes recommended.

I prefer Heidi where the DB setup allows it, and use DBeaver as a backup.

[cies]

Using DBeaver and its also not without problems. Lots of popup dialogs that we cannot stop. But ti does not constantly crash or lock up.

[orthecreedence]

This is my exact experience with DBeaver. Absolutely cannot stop all the frustrating popups. Finally got fed up and started using vim+dadbod and while the experience is a bit less batteries-included, I was mostly just using DBeaver to run raw SQL anyway, and have been on vim for over a decade so that's an option for me. Now my SQL queries live in per-project versioned files instead of some eclipse project folder somewhere and I can edit them with all the power of vim which speeds up my workflows.

But nobody's going to do this without being a huge vim nerd, so I recognize it's not a general alternative.