Using MotherDuck UI

Login

To log in to MotherDuck UI, please go to app.motherduck.com. You will be redirected to our web UI.

info

Note you can also connect to the MotherDuck UI directly when starting DuckDB CLI by running the following command:

duckdb "md:" -ui

Main Window

Executing a sample query

After you log in, run the following SQL query:

SELECT 
  country_name, city, pm25_concentration AS pm25_pollution
FROM sample_data.who.ambient_air_quality
WHERE year=2019 AND pm25_concentration IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY pm25_pollution ASC

This query accesses the Sample Data Database which is attached by default.

MotherDuck executes this query in the cloud. Query results are saved into your browser into an interactive panel for fast data exploration with data sorting, filtering, and pivoting.

You can also click the Expand button on the top right of each cell to expand the editor and results area.

Diving into your data with Column Explorer

Exploring tables or resultsets

The Column Explorer allows you to see stats on either a selected table or the resultset from the selected notebook cell.

Seeing value frequencies

For each column, you'll see the column type, the most commonly-occurring values and the percentage of values that are NULL.

In the case the values are numerical, you'll see a histogram visualization.

Charting data over time

If you have timestamp data, you'll also see a chart in the Column Explorer with automatic binning over time.

The Column Explorer is collapsible by clicking the toggle on the top right.

Dig into your results in the Cell Content Pane

Click on a cell in your results to see it's full contents.

Interact with JSON values

Expand, collapse, and copy content from JSON type columns. You can also copy the keypath to a specific value, or the value itself!

Writing queries with Autocomplete

MotherDuck Web UI supports autocomplete. As you write SQL in the UI, on every keystroke autocomplete brings up query syntax suggestions. You can turn off autocomplete in Web UI settings, found by clicking your profile in the top-left and choosing "Settings" followed by "Preferences."

Writing SQL with confidence using FixIt

FixIt helps you resolve common SQL errors by offering fixes in-line.

FixIt uses a large language model (LLM) to generate suggestions; it feeds the error, the query, and additional context into an LLM to generate a new line that fixes the query.

Settings

MotherDuck settings are found by clicking your profile at the top-left. These settings are specific to each MotherDuck user and organization.

General: Access Tokens

This section allows you to create access tokens, which can be use for programmatically authenticating to MotherDuck. Tokens can have expiry dates.

Organization

This section allows you to change the display name of the organization. You can also enable all users in your email domain to join you in your MotherDuck organization. See "Managing Organizations" for more information.

Members

Shows you the members with access to this organization and allows you to invite new members to join you in MotherDuck.

Preferences: UI settings

• Enable autocomplete when typing
• Enable inline SQL error fix suggestions

Secrets

MotherDuck enables you to query cloud blob stores without supplying credentials each time. Currently, credentials are supported for AWS S3 and Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage (GCS), CloudFlare R2 and Hugging Face.

Plans

Shows your current plan (Free, Standard) and allows you to switch plans.

Billing

Displays your current plan, primary billing email address and estimated invoices and usage during free trial. After the free trial, you can see actual usage and access your invoices.

Keyboard shortcuts

MotherDuck supports the following keyboard shortcuts.

Use Ctrl for Windows/Linux and ⌘ (Command) for Mac. Use Alt for Windows/Linux and ⌥ (Option) for Mac.

Command	Action
Ctrl/⌘ + Enter	Run the current cell.
Ctrl/⌘ + Shift + Enter	Run selected text in the current cell. If no text is selected, run the whole cell.
Shift + Enter or Alt/⌥ + Enter	Run the current cell, then advance to the next cell, creating a new one if necessary.
Tab	When editing a query, indent current line. When navigating the notebook, advance to next UI element/button. Hit Esc to allow Tab to no longer indent current line and advance to next UI element instead.
Shift + Tab	When editing a query, de-indent current line. When navigating the notebook, move to previous UI element/button. Hit Esc to allow Shift + Tab to no longer de-indent current line and move to previous UI element instead.
Esc	Change Tab key behavior to navigate the UI instead of indent/de-indent editor text. Once another cell is selected, Tab behavior reverts to indent/de-indent.
Ctrl/⌘ + /	Toggle comment on all highlighted lines in query editor by prepending or removing -- at the start of each line. Will comment out the highlighted lines unless all lines are already commented out, in which case it will uncomment.
Ctrl/⌘ + z	Undo query edits within currently selected cell.
Ctrl/⌘ + Shift + z	Redo query edits within currently selected cell.
Ctrl/⌘ + ↑	Move currently selected cell up.
Ctrl/⌘ + ↓	Move currently selected cell down.