I built (vibe coded with direction) a free, open source alternative to TablePlus.
The goal is high performance and easy to use just like TablePlus but without that nagging window asking you to pay to have more than 2 active tabs.
It also runs in the browser for a fun demo since it can be compiled to WASM.
Feedback is super welcome and I'm continuing to iterate upon it and am already using it as my daily driver and ironing out the kinks. It works well enough™ already but expect a few janky things here and there.
They may be popular, but that doesn't mean they're not silly. Requiring magical signatures to get rid of the scary "this person is trying to hack you" popups is quite a silly thing for an operating system to do.
Double checking if you're sure you want to run `video of grandma.jpg.app` makes sense, prompting for execution for third party code isn't that strange.
The way Apple implemented it, where you can just sign your malware so the signature part is kind of useless, makes it weird, though.
It's native in that it doesn't start a whole web browser with hooks to native code, like most cross-platform applications. That saves a lot of RAM and storage (unless you're willing to subject yourself to testing with each platform's web view, which brings its own problems to the table for minimal benefit).
Based on the description, it looks like the author is using Linux. Native doesn't really exist there. There are a couple of flavours, but none of them are any more native than the other, and none of them are much more native than just rendering the UI yourself.
Modern Windows and Android development also often use the very same technique. Old Win32 (and I presume macOS, though the rise of iPad apps on macOS make me start to wonder) still offer some native-ish controls but they're not usable outside of their own platforms.
With egui you don't need to actually run a full copy of every version of Windows and macOS to see if the program runs. If it compiles, it'll work.
Actually I use macOS primarily but I use Linux for my VPSs and home server of course. I should probably test it on there.
TablePlus is notoriously not that great on Windows due to not being as platform agnostic.
I wanted to make this as platform agnostic as possible while being ultra performant. TablePlus is awesome on macOS, not so awesome on other platforms. Let's bridge that gap and make it open source and free.
I wouldn't say it's just a step above electron, I think the term "native" has always been a little overloaded in this way. For example, a game that uses egui for the HuD/menus could be rightly called native compared to a web game.
You're talking about "native controls", which is more specific. That said, I don't see any reason why egui would be used over native controls for this type of app. They probably just didn't think to ask their AI.
I imagine with AI, something like libui-ng would be pretty easy to improve and maintain. Looks like development has stalled though.
> You're talking about "native controls", which is more specific.
No, I am using "native" the way we used it before everyone starting rendering directly to the GPU. You can go back years on HN to see how it was used if you're confused.
My understanding of native is also that it's essentially natively compiled to the platform, not that it's necessarily using platform native UI.
The goal here with this project is to be platform agnostic. TablePlus due to being developed for macOS is much worse on other platforms than on macOS where it shines.
I wanted to bring the same experience but make it platform agnostic.
I built (vibe coded with direction) a free, open source alternative to TablePlus.
The goal is high performance and easy to use just like TablePlus but without that nagging window asking you to pay to have more than 2 active tabs.
It also runs in the browser for a fun demo since it can be compiled to WASM.
Feedback is super welcome and I'm continuing to iterate upon it and am already using it as my daily driver and ironing out the kinks. It works well enough™ already but expect a few janky things here and there.
>but without that nagging window asking you to pay to have more than 2 active tabs
I hope you didn't pay for the tokens you used to vibe this thing.
Depends on how many years of support of TablePlus you want to pay for.
You're right, this probably wasn't worth it on a personal level.
But on a collective level, maybe.
[dead]
> Yes, we support your silly OS as well. Windows and Linux users, you’re welcome.
yeah, the operating systems that underpin >90% of compute on the compute on the planet are silly and barely worth supporting.
this kind of “hey claude, write prose exactly as lame as usual but also make it snarky and rude in tone” writing is just fantastically bad.
GNU/Linux is only installed on a small percentage of end devices. Most are using Android/Linux, a different OS.
amongst developers that percentage is much less small, and this is a developer tool.
You're right, Linux is great and I use it for all my server hosting needs.
They may be popular, but that doesn't mean they're not silly. Requiring magical signatures to get rid of the scary "this person is trying to hack you" popups is quite a silly thing for an operating system to do.
Meanwhile macos prompts users to not run signed software?
Double checking if you're sure you want to run `video of grandma.jpg.app` makes sense, prompting for execution for third party code isn't that strange.
The way Apple implemented it, where you can just sign your malware so the signature part is kind of useless, makes it weird, though.
This is the kind of project where the death of “native” as a term is sad.
You’re not truly native if you’re using egui, you’re just a step above Electron & co. TablePlus is actually native and it shows.
If you’re vibe coding this shit, why can’t you just tell it to output platform specific things?
It's native in that it doesn't start a whole web browser with hooks to native code, like most cross-platform applications. That saves a lot of RAM and storage (unless you're willing to subject yourself to testing with each platform's web view, which brings its own problems to the table for minimal benefit).
Based on the description, it looks like the author is using Linux. Native doesn't really exist there. There are a couple of flavours, but none of them are any more native than the other, and none of them are much more native than just rendering the UI yourself.
Modern Windows and Android development also often use the very same technique. Old Win32 (and I presume macOS, though the rise of iPad apps on macOS make me start to wonder) still offer some native-ish controls but they're not usable outside of their own platforms.
With egui you don't need to actually run a full copy of every version of Windows and macOS to see if the program runs. If it compiles, it'll work.
Actually I use macOS primarily but I use Linux for my VPSs and home server of course. I should probably test it on there.
TablePlus is notoriously not that great on Windows due to not being as platform agnostic.
I wanted to make this as platform agnostic as possible while being ultra performant. TablePlus is awesome on macOS, not so awesome on other platforms. Let's bridge that gap and make it open source and free.
I wouldn't say it's just a step above electron, I think the term "native" has always been a little overloaded in this way. For example, a game that uses egui for the HuD/menus could be rightly called native compared to a web game.
You're talking about "native controls", which is more specific. That said, I don't see any reason why egui would be used over native controls for this type of app. They probably just didn't think to ask their AI.
I imagine with AI, something like libui-ng would be pretty easy to improve and maintain. Looks like development has stalled though.
> You're talking about "native controls", which is more specific.
No, I am using "native" the way we used it before everyone starting rendering directly to the GPU. You can go back years on HN to see how it was used if you're confused.
Well I can only remember back to 2008 or so, but since then the term has always been somewhat overloaded. Did I sound confused in my comment?
My understanding of native is also that it's essentially natively compiled to the platform, not that it's necessarily using platform native UI.
The goal here with this project is to be platform agnostic. TablePlus due to being developed for macOS is much worse on other platforms than on macOS where it shines.
I wanted to bring the same experience but make it platform agnostic.
Language changes.
Rust for-the-fuck-of-it rewrites have become the new Javascript because-we-can rewrites.
Making the justification for this project's existence especially meta on so many levels.Don't hide it, run with it