How do I limit the number of rows that are loaded in a QGIS attribute table?

Question

Every time I accidentally open an attribute table for a large table in QGIS it takes ages to load. The data is in Postgres, but that doesn't help when the table is trying to load millions of features. Is there an option to only load say the first 1000 rows, then load the rest as required, like pagination? Similar to ArcGIS.

I know that I can query first, or use psql or pgadmin, but sometimes you just want to see the attributes in QGIS. Sometimes it's an accident.

Answer 1

In QGIS 3.4 menu 1) Select Settings->Options 2) In the dialog Options select the tab Data Source 3) The opposite the label Attribute table behavior choose the value "Show features visible on map" 4) Then when you limit the number of features on the map the attribute table will appear much faster.

Answer 2

If you don't want to change your default settings like mentioned in the other answer, you can use keyboard shortcut:

• F6 to open the attribute table
• Shift + F6 to open selected features only (Shift like Selected)
• Ctrl + F6 to open visible features only

So you can do this tip per layer (according to the number of feature you estimate)

Source: https://north-road.com/qgis-3-0-shortcuts/