MongoTui

English | Русский

A MongoDB client for your terminal and browser. Browse databases, run queries, edit documents, and manage connections from the TUI or local Web interface. Available for Linux, macOS and Windows, with English and Russian interfaces.

Main window	Connection manager

Document editor	Master password

Web workspace	Web settings

Features

• Terminal and local Web interfaces in one executable, sharing saved profiles, settings and history.
• Saved connections with encrypted passwords, selectable security modes (master password, OS keyring on macOS/Windows, or a local key file) and SSH/TPAM support with 2FA.
• Database and collection browser, index management, user management and statistics. Empty databases known from the URI, authentication source or user privileges remain visible in the tree. Right-click a connection to create a database with its first collection, or a database to create a collection or open an empty query tab bound to it. Creating a database writes to the server immediately. Right-click a database (or a connection for admin) to create, edit and delete MongoDB users, assign database and cluster roles, generate passwords and copy a ready-to-use connection string. Index lists show key fields, directions and uniqueness; deleting an index requires confirmation.
• JavaScript query tabs with syntax highlighting, autocomplete and query history. Each TUI tab shows its connection name and database above the query editor. History lets you choose a saved connection, inspect query details and reopen a query without running it. Open and save query files on disk, with a native file picker and a list of the ten most recently used files.
• Table, Tree and JSON result views; document editing as Canonical Extended JSON with BSON type checks. After a document is inserted, saved or deleted, TUI reloads the last verified read without changing the editor draft.
• Collection import and export in JSON.
• AI query assistance and translation through an OpenAI-compatible API.

Requirements

Requirements and dependency installation: macOS · Linux · Windows.

Installation

Download the archive for your platform from Releases and extract it in full. The .NET runtime is included.

Run mongo-tui --version to check the build version, license and author credits.

macOS — required before first launch

Release binaries are unsigned and not notarized, so Gatekeeper blocks downloaded builds.
Before launching a downloaded build for the first time, open a terminal in the extracted application directory and remove the quarantine attribute from the executable and its libraries:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./mongo-tui
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./libe_sqlite3.dylib
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./libonigwrap.dylib
chmod +x ./mongo-tui
./mongo-tui

Linux

chmod +x ./mongo-tui
./mongo-tui

Windows

Run mongo-tui.exe.

Web interface

mongo-tui web --open

The default address is http://127.0.0.1:8765; use --port 9000 to change it. Running mongo-tui without arguments still starts the terminal interface. Sign in with your master password. For first setup or keyring/local-key-file modes, use the one-time link printed in the terminal; --open opens that link automatically. Web resources are embedded; no wwwroot folder is required beside the executable.

Connections and settings are shared with TUI. Features include database and collection browsing, JavaScript queries, Table/Tree/JSON/Raw results, document editing, indexes, history, query files, application logs, JSON import/export and AI assistance. Details.

Browse mode reads 50 documents per page through the driver; Script mode uses installed mongosh. The explorer also supports MongoDB user management, and Web history can open a query in a new tab. Web transfers are capped at 32 MiB and exports at 10,000 documents. The server is intended for local access; keep it on loopback without a reverse proxy or port forwarding.

The query timeout is shared by TUI and web. Configure it under Settings → Queries (default: 30 seconds; 0 disables the timeout). Changes apply to subsequent queries.

Getting started

1. Launch MongoTui and choose how to protect saved secrets: a master password (recommended), the OS keyring on macOS/Windows, or a local key file. You can change the mode later in Settings → Security….
2. Open Connection → Manage connections…, add a MongoDB URI, save the profile and connect. From URI fills the authentication fields from a full connection string. Copy URI copies the selected profile's full connection string, including credentials, to the clipboard.
3. Expand a database and open a collection with Enter or a double-click. A query tab opens with a find query that runs immediately and loads up to 50 documents.
4. Edit the query and press F5 or Ctrl+R. Choose Table, Tree, JSON or Raw in Settings → Result view.

For scripts with console.log or print, select Raw (stdout) before running. It displays native mongosh output without JSON parsing, preserving spaces and line breaks. In web Script mode, select Raw (stdout) above the results; downloading saves a .txt file. To obtain structured documents again, choose Table, Tree or JSON and rerun the script.

Queries use the tab's database. For example:

db.getCollection('users').find({ active: true }).limit(50).toArray()

Right-click a tree node or result to see its available actions. New query on a database opens an empty tab bound to that database; on a collection it opens the same tab as a double-click.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+O	Connection manager
Ctrl+T / Ctrl+W	New / close query tab
F5 / Ctrl+R	Run the selection, or the whole script when nothing is selected
Ctrl+L	Open query file
Ctrl+S	Save query file
Alt+← / Alt+→	Move by word in the editor; add Shift to select
Home / End	Move to the start / end of the line
Ctrl+Space	Autocomplete in the editor; context menu in the tree
Ctrl+H	Query history
F2 / F3	Export / import
F9	Refresh
Tab / Shift+Tab	Move between the tree, editor and results
F10	Focus the menu bar
Ctrl+C	Copy the selected text (Ctrl+C on macOS; the terminal reserves Cmd+C)
Ctrl+V / Cmd+V	Paste from the clipboard
Ctrl+Q	Exit

For autocomplete, use ↑/↓ to choose, Enter or Tab to insert, and Esc to dismiss. Database, collection and field names are available through Ctrl+Space; method suggestions also appear while typing.

Focus Results with Tab or a click. Up/Down scroll one line and Left/Right scroll one column immediately, including when the caret is on a short line. PageUp/PageDown scroll a page. Scrollbars appear when the content exceeds the pane; the mouse wheel scrolls vertically. Shift+arrows select text for copying.

Navigation on macOS. In the browser editor, Cmd+←/→ moves to the line boundaries and Option+←/→ moves by word. In TUI, Option must be sent as Alt (or Esc+b / Esc+f). Terminal.Gui 2.5 cannot distinguish a Cmd modifier. If your terminal supports custom key mappings, map Cmd+← to Home (ESC[H) and Cmd+→ to End (ESC[F); these move within the current line. The application cannot handle shortcuts intercepted by the terminal.

The full list is always available in the app under Help → Keyboard shortcuts. Shortcuts act on the focused pane, so the same Ctrl+C copies from the editor, the results or a dialog field.

Copy on macOS. Terminals intercept Cmd+C for their own copy and never forward it to the application, so MongoTui copies with Ctrl+C (into the system clipboard via pbcopy). To reuse Cmd+C, remap it in the terminal to send Ctrl+C (0x03) — in Terminal.app via Settings → Profiles → Keyboard and in iTerm2 via Settings → Keys. On Linux and over SSH without xclip, copy falls back to the OSC 52 escape sequence, which modern terminals support.

Optional setup

SSH/TPAM. Open SSH SOCKS… in the connection form and enter the SSH host, port and login.
Provide a key file or use your ssh-agent and SSH config. Authentication prompts, including 2FA, appear inside MongoTui. Import and export are unavailable over SOCKS connections.

AI assistant. Set the base URL, model and API key in Settings → AI settings….
Then use Query → AI assistant… or Translate…. Responses are shown in a dialog. The assistant receives the active database, the list of collections and the sampled field names with their BSON types, so it can draft queries against the real schema.

Current limitations

• Editing and deletion require a simple find/findOne result without a projection. Web Browse results are also editable. The document's _id cannot be changed. Opening an existing document reloads its current stored value through the driver.
• Saving replaces the whole document and can overwrite changes made after opening the editor. The driver also normalizes Double(-0.0) to +0.0 on read; saving persists this change. See BSON editing limits. Cancelling or timing out a write does not roll it back.
• TUI Tree mode displays formatted documents without expandable nodes; Web Tree nodes can expand.
• Use JSON for transfers: TUI CSV options and BSON support in the dialogs are incomplete. Database dump/restore is not available in the interface.

Local data

Connections, settings and history are stored in ~/.mongotui/mongotui.db (%USERPROFILE%\.mongotui\mongotui.db on Windows). MONGOTUI_DATA_DIR overrides the data directory. Logs are in its logs subdirectory. Shell query text is stored in history; it is excluded from logs.

Connection passwords and the AI API key are encrypted with a key protected by the selected security mode. In No master password mode the key is stored in ~/.mongotui/kek.key with user-only permissions; anyone who can read that file can decrypt the secrets.

Choose the logging level in Settings → Logging in TUI or Web. The preference is stored in the local database and applied without restarting; see logging configuration.

Development

Build, run and test · Publish a build · Project conventions · Release preparation · Changelog.

Authors

Klabukov Erik (AMEST) · Co-author: Medvedev Denis (medved91).

License

MIT. Dependency notices: Third-party licenses.