saheersk/lazymongo: fast, keyboard-driven terminal UI for MongoDB — inspired by lazygit and lazydocker

A fast, keyboard-driven terminal UI for MongoDB — inspired by lazygit and lazydocker.

Features

Navigation & browsing

• Sidebar tree — databases expand to show collections; j/k to move, Enter to select, / to search/filter the list
• Document table — paginated table view with column headers auto-built from the first page of results
• Detail panel — syntax-highlighted JSON viewer for the selected document with scroll support
• Responsive layout — adapts from 80 columns upward; full mouse support

Documents

• Insert a new document in your $EDITOR (n)
• Edit the selected document in your $EDITOR (e)
• Clone a document (strips _id, opens editor) (c)
• Delete a single document with confirmation (d → y)
• Multi-select rows with space, bulk-delete with D → y

Querying

• Filter with any MongoDB query expression — {"status":"active","age":{"$gt":18}} (/)
• Filter autocomplete — Tab completes field names and $ query operators ($gt, $in, $regex, …)
• Filter history — ↑/↓ in the filter bar to recall previous filters
• Sort by field name, -field for descending, or a full sort doc — {"field":-1} (s)
• Reset filter + sort in one keystroke (r)
• Aggregate — open a pipeline editor, run it, see results tagged [AGG]; recent pipelines offered in a picker (a)
• Explain plan — see COLLSCAN/IXSCAN, index used, docs/keys examined, execution time; press n on a COLLSCAN to create the missing index pre-filled from your filter (E)

Schema & data tools

• Schema inference — samples up to 100 docs and shows per-field type breakdown with presence % (S)
• Import — bulk-insert from .json (array), .jsonl, .ndjson, or .csv with tab-completion for file paths (i)
• Export — export query results to JSON/CSV (x)
• Copy _id or full document JSON to clipboard (y / Y)

Indexes

• List all indexes with keys, flags and stats (I)
• Create an index from a JSON template in $EDITOR (n inside index panel)
• Drop a selected index with confirmation (d inside index panel)

Collections & databases

• Create collection directly from the sidebar (c)
• Drop collection with two-step confirmation (D on a collection in sidebar)
• Drop database with two-step confirmation (D on a database in sidebar)

Live & connection features

• Watch mode — press W on a loaded collection to open a live change-stream overlay; INSERT/UPDATE/REPLACE/DELETE events appear in real time (requires a replica set)
• Connection health — periodic ping every 15 s; status bar shows latency (◆ 2ms) or offline indicator (◇)
• Connection switch — press P to pick any saved profile without restarting (P)

UI & themes

• 6 built-in themes — catppuccin, catppuccin-latte (light), high-contrast, tokyo-night, nord, dracula; cycle with T
• Nerd Font icons — database/collection/document glyphs in panel titles and the sidebar (disable with ui.nerdFonts: false for unpatched fonts)
• Toast notifications — copy/export/save confirmations pop up in the top-right corner
• Typed table cells — numbers, booleans, ObjectIds, dates, and null are colour-coded in the document table
• Help overlay — ? shows a full keybinding reference at any time

Install

macOS

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/saheersk/lazymongo/main/scripts/install_update_darwin.sh | bash

Or manually:

# Apple Silicon (M1 / M2 / M3)
curl -fsSL https://github.com/saheersk/lazymongo/releases/latest/download/lazymongo_darwin_arm64.tar.gz | tar xz && sudo mv lazymongo /usr/local/bin/

# Intel
curl -fsSL https://github.com/saheersk/lazymongo/releases/latest/download/lazymongo_darwin_amd64.tar.gz | tar xz && sudo mv lazymongo /usr/local/bin/

Or with Homebrew:

brew tap saheersk/tap
brew install lazymongo

Linux

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/saheersk/lazymongo/main/scripts/install_update_linux.sh | bash

Or manually:

# amd64
curl -fsSL https://github.com/saheersk/lazymongo/releases/latest/download/lazymongo_linux_amd64.tar.gz | tar xz && sudo mv lazymongo /usr/local/bin/

# arm64 (Raspberry Pi, AWS Graviton)
curl -fsSL https://github.com/saheersk/lazymongo/releases/latest/download/lazymongo_linux_arm64.tar.gz | tar xz && sudo mv lazymongo /usr/local/bin/

Windows

Invoke-WebRequest https://github.com/saheersk/lazymongo/releases/latest/download/lazymongo_windows_amd64.zip -OutFile lazymongo.zip
Expand-Archive lazymongo.zip -DestinationPath "$HOME\bin"

Add $HOME\bin to your PATH via System Properties → Environment Variables → Path → New.

Go

go install github.com/saheersk/lazymongo@latest

Self-update (any install method)

Once lazymongo is installed, update it in place:

lazymongo --update
# Checking for updates…
# Current: v0.4.1
# Latest:  v0.5.0
# Downloading v0.5.0 (darwin/arm64)…
# ✓  Updated to v0.5.0 — restart lazymongo.

If the binary lives in a system directory you'll need sudo lazymongo --update.

Requires Go 1.21+. Binary lands in $(go env GOPATH)/bin.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/saheersk/lazymongo
cd lazymongo
go build -o lazymongo .

Quick start

# Local MongoDB (default: mongodb://localhost:27017)
lazymongo

# Explicit URI
lazymongo --uri "mongodb://localhost:27017"

# Atlas / remote cluster
lazymongo --uri "mongodb+srv://user:[email protected]"

# Host and port separately
lazymongo --host 192.168.1.10 --port 27017

# Named profile shorthand
lazymongo local

Configuration

On first run, lazymongo writes ~/.config/lazymongo/config.yaml:

connections:
  - name: local
    uri: mongodb://localhost:27017
    default: true
    theme: catppuccin   # per-profile theme override

ui:
  theme: catppuccin     # catppuccin | catppuccin-latte | high-contrast | tokyo-night | nord | dracula
  mouse: true
  pageSize: 50
  nerdFonts: true       # set false if your terminal font has no Nerd Font glyphs
  editor: ""            # leave empty to use $EDITOR / $VISUAL / vim

Named profiles

Save a connection and give it a name:

# Save profiles
lazymongo --uri mongodb://localhost:27017 --save local
lazymongo --uri "mongodb+srv://user:[email protected]" --save atlas

# Connect by name
lazymongo local
lazymongo --profile atlas

When more than one profile exists and none is specified, a picker appears on launch. Inside the app, press P at any time to switch profiles without restarting.

Themes

Cycle through all themes with T, or set one per profile:

connections:
  - name: production
    uri: mongodb+srv://...
    theme: high-contrast
  - name: local
    uri: mongodb://localhost:27017
    theme: catppuccin

Available themes: catppuccin · catppuccin-latte (light) · high-contrast · tokyo-night · nord · dracula

Keyboard reference

Global

Sidebar

Document list

Filter / sort bar

Aggregate mode

Press a to open your $EDITOR with a pipeline template. If you've run pipelines before, a picker appears first with your 10 most recent pipelines (↑/↓ select, Enter edit, Esc cancel):

[
  { "$match": {} }
]

Save and close to run. Results appear tagged [AGG].

While viewing [AGG] results, filter/sort/edit/export keys show a reminder that they operate on the live collection — exit agg mode first.

Pipelines without $limit, $out, or $merge automatically get {"$limit": 1000} appended.

Index panel (I)

Index creation template:

{
  "keys": { "fieldName": 1 },
  "unique": false,
  "sparse": false,
  "ttlSeconds": -1
}

Use 1 / -1 for ascending/descending, "text" for full-text indexes. Set ttlSeconds to a value ≥ 0 to create a TTL index (-1 disables it).

Explain plan overlay (E)

Shows the winning plan for the current query:

• IXSCAN — index name, keys examined, selectivity
• COLLSCAN — warning for missing index, plus n to open the index editor pre-filled with the fields of your current filter
• Execution time and docs returned

Press n to create the suggested index, any other key to close.

Schema overlay (S)

Samples up to 100 documents and shows:

• Every field found, sorted by frequency
• BSON type breakdown (string, int32, objectId, …)
• Presence percentage

j / k to scroll, any other key to close.

Import overlay (i)

Supported formats: .json (array) · .jsonl · .ndjson · .csv

Inserts in batches of 500. Duplicate-key errors are skipped and counted; the rest still insert.

Watch overlay (W)

Requires a MongoDB replica set (standalone instances don't support change streams).

Events show operation type (INSERT / UPDATE / REPLACE / DELETE), document ID, a field preview, and a relative timestamp. Newest events appear at the top; up to 100 events are kept in the buffer.

Connection picker (P)

Selecting a profile disconnects the current client and reconnects without restarting the app. The sidebar and document list reset automatically.

Detail panel

Editor integration

lazymongo opens documents and pipelines in $EDITOR (fallback: $VISUAL, then vim). Multi-word commands work:

ui:
  editor: "code --wait"
  # editor: "nvim"
  # editor: "nano"

Temp files are created as /tmp/lazymongo-*.json in MongoDB Extended JSON format. Save and close to apply; delete all content or quit without saving to cancel.

Connection health

A background ping runs every 15 seconds:

• ◆ localhost:27017 2ms — connected, latency shown
• ◇ localhost:27017 — connection lost

On reconnect the indicator returns to ◆ automatically.

Watch mode

Watch mode uses MongoDB change streams and requires a replica set (or Atlas). A standalone mongod will show an error immediately.

To start a local single-node replica set for testing:

mongod --replSet rs0 --dbpath /tmp/rs0 --port 27017 --fork --logpath /tmp/rs0.log
mongosh --eval "rs.initiate()"

Then press W on any collection to start watching.

Compatibility

Requires MongoDB Go driver v2.

Development

# Run all tests
go test ./...

# Integration tests (requires MongoDB on localhost:27017)
go test ./internal/mongo/... -v

# Build
go build -o lazymongo .

Tests use the lazymongo_test database and clean up after themselves.

Project layout

.
├── main.go
├── cmd/
│   ├── root.go          # cobra CLI, flag parsing, config loading
│   └── picker.go        # startup profile picker
├── internal/
│   ├── config/          # viper-backed YAML config, named profiles
│   ├── mongo/           # MongoDB client, CRUD, aggregate, indexes,
│   │                    # explain, schema, import, health, watch
│   ├── util/            # BSON↔JSON, clipboard, syntax highlight, export, import parse
│   └── tui/
│       ├── app.go       # root bubbletea model, message routing, overlays
│       ├── msg/         # shared message types (no import cycles)
│       ├── keymap/      # all key bindings
│       ├── style/       # lipgloss themes (6 built-in)
│       └── panels/
│           ├── sidebar/    # database + collection tree, search, create/drop
│           ├── documents/  # paginated table, filter/sort/agg/multi-select
│           ├── detail/     # single-document JSON viewer
│           ├── indexes/    # index list, create, drop
│           └── statusbar/  # bottom status line, health indicator
└── assets/
    └── screenshot.png