mycli

A command line client for MySQL with auto-completion and syntax highlighting.

Homepage: https://mycli.net

Documentation: https://mycli.net/docs

Mycli is compatible with MySQL, MariaDB, Percona, TiDB, and Apache Doris.

Postgres Equivalent: https://pgcli.com

Release 2.x

Release 2.0.0 has breaking changes!

Quick Start

If you already know how to install Python packages, then you can install mycli via pip. This package is always up to date.

You might need sudo on Linux.

pip install --upgrade 'mycli[all]'

or, only on macOS (pygments is optional but recommended):

brew update && brew install mycli pygments

or, only on Debian or Ubuntu (fzf and pygments are optional but recommended):

sudo apt-get install mycli fzf python3-pygments

Usage

See

mycli --help

Features

Auto-completion as you type for SQL keywords as well as tables, views, columns, enums, and more!
Fuzzy history search using fzf.
Output explorer using fzf or other tools.
Syntax highlighting using Pygments.
Smart-completion (enabled by default) will suggest context-sensitive completion.
- SELECT * FROM <tab> will only show table names.
- SELECT * FROM users WHERE <tab> will only show column names.
Support for multiline queries.
Favorite queries with positional or named parameters using Jinja. Save a query using /fs <alias> <query> and execute it with /f <alias> or /f <alias> --key=value.
Timing of sql statements and table rendering.
Log every query and its results to a file (disabled by default).
Pretty print tabular data (with colors!).
Support for SSL connections
Shell-style trailing redirects with $>, $>> and $| operators.
Polars dataframe transforms and plots with .|, and Parquet saves with .>.
Support for querying LLMs with context derived from your schema using /llm.
Support for storing passwords in the system keyring.

Mycli creates a config file ~/.myclirc on the first run; you can use the options in that file to configure the above features, and more.

Some features are only exposed as key bindings.

Implementation

mycli is written using prompt_toolkit and other Python libraries.

Contributions

If you're interested in contributing to this project, first of all we would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude. We've written a small doc to describe how to get mycli running in a development setup.

https://github.com/dbcli/mycli/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md

Additional Install Instructions

Shell Completions

If installed via Homebrew, shell completions may already be configured.

Otherwise, to configure shell completions for the current session, execute a command like this:

eval "$(mycli --completions SHELL)"

replacing SHELL with bash, zsh, or fish, depending on your choice of shell.

To permanently install shell completions, the above command may be added to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, or ~/.config/fish/config.fish. To speed up login time, the output of mycli --completions SHELL may be saved to a file and loaded with source.

Alternative Install Methods

These are some alternative ways to install mycli that are not managed by our team but provided by OS package maintainers. OS packages could be considerably out of date.

If present, the fzf package can be used for fuzzy history search, and as an output "explorer" with the \x special command. pygemtize can be used for syntax highlighting within the fuzzy history search. The less package is also expected, but almost always already installed.

Arch, Manjaro

You can install the mycli package available in the AUR. fzf and python-pygments are optional but recommended:

yay -S mycli fzf python-pygments

Debian, Ubuntu

On Debian and Ubuntu distributions, you can easily install the mycli package using apt. The fzf and python3-pygments packages are optional but recommended:

sudo apt-get install mycli fzf python3-pygments

Fedora

Fedora has a package available for mycli; install it using dnf. The fzf and python-pygments packages are optional but recommended:

sudo dnf install mycli fzf python-pygments

Windows

Option 1: Native Windows

Install the less pager, for example by scoop install less.

Install the fzf fuzzy finder, for example by scoop install fzf.

Follow the instructions on this blog post: https://web.archive.org/web/20221006045208/https://www.codewall.co.uk/installing-using-mycli-on-windows/

The libraries used in mycli are Windows-compatible, but there are known limitations according to the test suite. The basics work without any modifications, but this configuration isn't supported software at this time.

PRs to address shortcomings on Windows would be welcome!

Option 2: WSL

Mycli is more compatible with WSL than with native Windows, though still not 100% perfect. This is a good option for using mycli on Windows.

With WSL, you are probably using an Ubuntu distribution, in which case recommended dependencies can be installed by

sudo apt-get install fzf python3-pygments

and mycli can be installed by apt-get or by pip (recommended):

pip install --upgrade 'mycli[all]'

PRs to complete WSL support would be welcome!

Thanks

This project was funded through Kickstarter. Our thanks to the backers who supported the project.

A special thanks to Jonathan Slenders for creating Python Prompt Toolkit, which is quite literally the backbone library, that made this app possible. Jonathan has also provided valuable feedback and support during the development of this app.

Click is used for command line option parsing and printing error messages.

Thanks to PyMysql for a pure Python adapter to MySQL databases.

Compatibility

Mycli is tested on macOS (full), Linux (full), Windows (partial), and WSL (partial), and requires Python 3.10 or better.

To connect to MySQL versions earlier than 5.5, you may need to set the following in ~/.myclirc:

[connection]
# character set for connections without --charset being set at the CLI
default_character_set = utf8

or set --charset=utf8 when invoking mycli

Configuration and Usage

For more information on using and configuring mycli, check out our documentation.

Common topics include:

Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distribution

mycli-2.18.1.tar.gz (849.8 kB view details)

Uploaded Aug 29, 2026 Source

Built Distribution

If you're not sure about the file name format, learn more about wheel file names.

The dropdown lists show the available interpreters, ABIs, and platforms. Enable javascript to be able to filter the list of wheel files.

mycli-2.18.1-py3-none-any.whl (181.6 kB view details)

Uploaded Aug 29, 2026 Python 3

File details

Details for the file mycli-2.18.1.tar.gz.

File metadata

Download URL: mycli-2.18.1.tar.gz
Upload date: Aug 29, 2026
Size: 849.8 kB
Tags: Source
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? Yes
Uploaded via: twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.13.14

File hashes

Hashes for mycli-2.18.1.tar.gz
Algorithm	Hash digest
SHA256	`818712974dcd20f3160946afcd5bb6704247d8baaedb33abb0c99c380cd4f320`
MD5	`85ae99da9dfafcc28771acce319073d6`
BLAKE2b-256	`6740bb0bc477652bc70d4044ab144cd0e26c90c755366b66e035e128362421b5`

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for mycli-2.18.1.tar.gz:

Publisher: publish.yml on dbcli/mycli

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

Statement:
- Statement type: https://in-toto.io/Statement/v1
- Predicate type: https://docs.pypi.org/attestations/publish/v1
- Subject name: mycli-2.18.1.tar.gz
- Subject digest: 818712974dcd20f3160946afcd5bb6704247d8baaedb33abb0c99c380cd4f320
- Sigstore transparency entry: 2637357035
- Sigstore integration time: Aug 29, 2026
Source repository:
- Permalink: dbcli/mycli@0b5cc348dda86f70c94f0bcf501cbbc85328ebbe
- Branch / Tag: refs/tags/2.18.1
- Owner: https://github.com/dbcli
- Access: public
Publication detail:
- Token Issuer: https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com
- Runner Environment: github-hosted
- Publication workflow: publish.yml@0b5cc348dda86f70c94f0bcf501cbbc85328ebbe
- Trigger Event: release