pgAdmin may be deployed as a desktop application by configuring the application to run in desktop mode and then utilising the desktop runtime to host the program on a supported Windows, Mac OS X or Linux installation.

The desktop runtime is a system-tray application that when launched, runs the pgAdmin server and launches a web browser to render the user interface. If additional instances of pgAdmin are launched, a new browser tab will be opened and be served by the existing instance of the server in order to minimise system resource utilisation. Clicking the icon in the system tray will present a menu offering options to open a new pgAdmin window, configure the runtime, view the server log and shut down the server.

Note

Pre-compiled and configured installation packages are available for a number of platforms. These packages should be used by end-users whereever possible - the following information is useful for the maintainers of those packages and users interested in understanding how pgAdmin works.

See also

For detailed instructions on building and configuring pgAdmin from scratch, please see the README file in the top level directory of the source code. For convenience, you can find the latest version of the file here , but be aware that this may differ from the version included with the source code for a specific version of pgAdmin.

Configuration

From pgAdmin 4 v2 onwards, the default configuration mode is server, however, this is overridden by the desktop runtime at startup. In most environments, no Python configuration is required unless you wish to override other default settings.

See The config.py File for more information on configuration settings.

Runtime

When executed, the runtime will automatically try to execute the pgAdmin Python application. If execution fails, it will prompt you to adjust the Python Path to include the directories containing the pgAdmin code as well as any additional Python dependencies. You can enter a list of paths by separating them with a semi-colon character, for example: 

/Users/dpage/.virtualenvs/pgadmin4/lib/python2.7/site-packages/;/Users/dpage/python-libs/

The configuration settings are stored using the QSettings class in Qt, which will use an INI file on Unix systems (~/.config/pgadmin/pgadmin4.conf), a plist file on Mac OS X (~/Library/Preferences/org.pgadmin.pgadmin4.plist), and the registry on Windows (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\pgadmin\pgadmin4).

The configuration settings:

Key Type Purpose
ApplicationPath String The directory containing pgAdmin4.py
BrowserCommand String An alternate command to run instead of the default browser.
ConnectionTimeout Integer The number of seconds to wait for application server startup.
FixedPort Boolean Use a fixed network port number rather than a random one.
OpenTabAtStartup Boolean Open a browser tab at startup.
PortNumber Integer The port number to use, if using a fixed port.
PythonPath String The Python module search path