SQLite Loading Extensions on MacOS

MacOS comes with a default SQLite that doesn’t allow you to load extensions.

You can check by opening up sqlite with sqlite3 and running this:

select * from pragma_compile_options();

You should see OMIT_LOAD_EXTENSION, meaning that extensions can’t be loaded.

If you run which sqlite3, you should see that it is in /usr/bin/sqlite3.

The quickest way to get a SQLite that can load extensions is with Homebrew. Simply brew install homebrew.

You can confirm the path by checking the output under caveats when running brew info sqlite. It should be something like /opt/homebrew/opt/sqlite/bin/sqlite3, but if you have an older OS or Homebrew, it might look something like /usr/local/opt/sqlite/bin/sqlite3.

Now, if you want to use an extension like sqlean in your SQLite connection, you can simply run:

.load relative/path/to/file/sqlean