Inlet vs Azure Data Studio: a Mac replacement after its retirement

In short

Azure Data Studio is retired. Microsoft ended support on 28 February 2026: since then it gets no updates, security patches or maintenance, and the extensions built for it were retired with it. The last version, 1.52.0 from June 2025, and its extensions stay on GitHub as an archive, without support or warranty. Microsoft’s replacement is Visual Studio Code with the MSSQL extension, free on Windows, macOS and Linux. For SQL Server Agent jobs and full administration it points to SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), which runs only on Windows.

Inlet is a free native Mac app for SQL Server and Azure SQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB, SQLite, MongoDB and Redis. It needs macOS 26 Tahoe or later and is new (version 0.1). It browses, edits and queries SQL Server with SQL Server authentication (a login name and password), but doesn’t sign in with Microsoft Entra ID or Windows accounts, and has no notebooks, schema compare, drawn query plans, backups or login management. If you used Azure Data Studio on a Mac mainly to query and edit data with a SQL login, Inlet is a native replacement; if you relied on Entra ID, notebooks or extensions, VS Code with the MSSQL extension is the closer match.

At a glance

As of October 2026, from Microsoft’s documentation and the Azure Data Studio and MSSQL extension repositories.

Where Azure Data Studio is stronger

For SQL Server, Azure Data Studio does several things Inlet doesn’t. Most of them now live in VS Code with the MSSQL extension, which Microsoft maintains:

• Microsoft Entra ID and Windows sign-in. Azure Data Studio signed in with Entra ID (with MFA) and with Windows accounts as well as SQL logins. Inlet uses SQL Server authentication only. An Azure SQL server set to Microsoft Entra-only authentication turns SQL logins off, so Inlet can’t connect to it.
• Notebooks. Azure Data Studio had notebooks for runbooks and investigations. Inlet has none.
• Admin and development tools. Schema compare, DACPAC import and export, SQL Database Projects, flat-file import, dashboards and charts, plus SQL Server Agent, Profiler and backup and restore in preview. Inlet’s Activity covers sessions, blocking, locks, table sizes and the costliest queries in the plan cache, but there’s no schema compare, backups, or login and user management.
• An editor with extensions. An integrated terminal, Git and an extension gallery. Inlet has no plugins.
• Windows, Linux and older Macs. Inlet is Mac-only and needs macOS 26.

VS Code with the MSSQL extension carries most of this on: Entra ID sign-in, Object Explorer, a graphical plan, table and schema designers, schema compare, SQL notebooks, a Query Profiler built on Extended Events, backup and restore, and GitHub Copilot. Since version 1.40 it also imports your Azure Data Studio connections, groups, settings and key bindings.

Where Inlet is stronger

• It isn’t retired. Azure Data Studio gets no more fixes, security fixes included. Inlet is new, so it also has a much shorter track record.
• A native Mac app. Inlet is written in Swift with SwiftUI and AppKit, and talks to SQL Server with its own TDS driver, so there’s no ODBC or FreeTDS to install. Azure Data Studio was built on Visual Studio Code and ran on Electron.
• Production connections open read-only. Tag a connection production and Inlet refuses writes before they’re sent, since SQL Server has no read-only session setting. Temp tables and reporting procedures such as sp_help and sp_who still work.
• Edits you review before they run. Changes to cells and rows wait until you commit (⌘S), and Review shows the T-SQL first. Each change is checked against what you loaded, so a row someone changed meanwhile isn’t overwritten.
• Your other databases in the same app. Azure Data Studio’s PostgreSQL and MySQL extensions retired with it. Microsoft points PostgreSQL users to a separate VS Code extension and, for MySQL, says a replacement is still to be announced. Inlet has PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, MongoDB and Redis beside SQL Server.
• Connections the way your Mac does them. Passwords in the Keychain, or asked for every time, and SSH tunnels through the system ssh, so ~/.ssh/config and the SSH agent work.

Moving from Azure Data Studio

Inlet doesn’t read Azure Data Studio’s saved connections, so you bring them over one at a time. Azure Data Studio kept them in its user settings file, under datasource.connections (and its server groups under datasource.connectionGroups). On a Mac that file is:

~/Library/Application Support/azuredatastudio/User/settings.json

Each entry has an options object with server, database, user, authenticationType (SqlLogin, Integrated for Windows, or AzureMFA for Entra ID), encrypt and trustServerCertificate. Passwords aren’t in the file: the ones you chose to save went into the macOS Keychain.

1. For each connection whose authenticationType is SqlLogin, put its values into an ADO.NET connection string:

   Server=tcp:<server>,1433;Initial Catalog=<database>;User ID=<user>;Encrypt=True;TrustServerCertificate=False;
   

2. In Inlet, choose Connect from URL and paste it. Inlet fills the form; you can also type the same values into New Connection.

3. Check the encryption choice against Azure Data Studio’s settings:

   Azure Data Studio	Closest choice in Inlet
   encrypt false	Off (the login is still encrypted when the server can)
   encrypt true, trustServerCertificate true	Encrypt without checking the certificate
   encrypt true, trustServerCertificate false	Verify the certificate
   encrypt strict	Strict encryption (TDS 8.0)

4. Connect. Inlet asks for the password the first time and can save it in the Keychain.

5. Tag each connection local, development, staging or production. Production connections open read-only.

Connections that use Integrated or AzureMFA can’t move to Inlet as they are: they need a SQL login on the server, and a server with Microsoft Entra-only authentication accepts none.

If you’ve already moved to VS Code, right-click a connection there and choose Copy Connection String. You get an ADO.NET string with ****** in place of the password: delete Password=******; before pasting it into Inlet. For the formats Inlet accepts, see SQL Server connection strings.

Which to choose

Choose VS Code with the MSSQL extension if you want the closest thing to Azure Data Studio: free, on Windows, macOS and Linux, with Entra ID sign-in, notebooks, schema compare, a graphical plan and an import for your Azure Data Studio connections. It’s Microsoft’s supported path.

Choose SSMS, on Windows or in a Windows virtual machine, for SQL Server Agent jobs and full administration. See Inlet vs SSMS.

Choose Inlet if you’re on macOS 26, sign in with SQL logins, and mostly browse, edit and query; you want a native Mac app with read-only production connections and checked, staged edits; or you also work with PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, MongoDB or Redis. Both are free, so you can keep VS Code for notebooks and Entra ID connections and use Inlet for the rest. Either way, move off Azure Data Studio itself: it no longer gets security fixes.