Guide
Layerbase Desktop
Layerbase Desktop is a native GUI for managing databases without a terminal. It wraps the SpinDB engine manager in a visual app, so you can create, start, query, and back up 21 database engines locally, and manage your Layerbase Cloud databases in the same window. It is free for personal use on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Download and install
Get the app from layerbase.com/desktop/download. The page detects your platform and offers the matching installer: a DMG on macOS (a universal build for both Intel and Apple Silicon), an NSIS installer or portable EXE on Windows 10 and later, and .deb or .rpm packages on Linux.
The macOS build is Developer ID signed and notarized (0.33.0 and later), so it opens straight from the DMG with no Gatekeeper workaround. Do not run xattr -cr on the app: that strips the notarization ticket rather than helping. Just drag it to Applications and open it.
Signing in
To manage cloud databases from the app, sign in with your Layerbase account. The app opens your browser, you continue with GitHub or Google, and the browser redirects back to the app once you are authenticated. It is the same account you use on the web dashboard. You do not need to sign in to work with purely local databases.
Local databases
Local databases run on your own machine through SpinDB. Create a container for any supported engine, then start, stop, clone, or delete it from the sidebar. A multi-tab query editor gives you syntax highlighting, live results, sorting, and filtering, and you can create and restore local snapshots for one-click data safety.
The local set is a superset of what Cloud offers. CockroachDB and SurrealDB, for example, are Desktop and SpinDB only today, so you can run them locally even though they are not creatable in the Cloud dashboard. Every Cloud engine is also available locally.
Managing cloud databases
Once you are signed in, your Layerbase Cloud databases appear alongside your local containers. From the app you can start and stop a database, wake a hibernated one, take and restore backups, and view usage. These actions run against the same Cloud backend as the web dashboard, so state stays consistent between the two.
Plan limits apply exactly as they do on the web. If you try to activate a database beyond your plan quota, deploy a paid-only engine, or act on a suspended account, the request is rejected with an upgrade prompt. Controls you cannot use are grayed out rather than hidden, so it is clear what an upgrade would unlock.
Session diagnostics and privacy
The desktop app can record anonymized session diagnostics to help us debug issues. This is off by default and controlled centrally by Layerbase, not a per-user toggle: there is a single remote switch that is disabled unless we turn it on for troubleshooting. Secret values such as connection credentials are masked from the recording.