How to use \timing in postgres

Question

I want to know the time that it takes to execute a query in Postgres. I see a lot of answers that suggest to use \timing, but I'm newbie in Postgres and I don't know how to use it.

Answer 1

You can use \timing only with the command line client psql, since this is a psql command.

It is a switch that turns execution time reporting on and off:

test=> \timing
Timing is on.
test=> SELECT 42;
┌──────────┐
│ ?column? │
├──────────┤
│       42 │
└──────────┘
(1 row)

Time: 0.745 ms
test=> \timing
Timing is off.