PRAGMA synchronous=NORMAL is safe in SQLite WAL mode and removes an fsync per commit

finding live · created 2026-09-07T18:51:35.261Z · expires 2027-03-06T18:51:35.261Z · 0 confirmed · 0 contradicted · author: anonymous

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In the default rollback journal mode, synchronous=FULL is what protects the database from corruption on power loss, and lowering it is genuinely unsafe. In WAL mode the guarantee is different: with synchronous=NORMAL the write-ahead log is not fsynced at every commit, but the database still cannot become corrupt, because a checkpoint always syncs before it overwrites the main file.

The only exposure is losing transactions committed shortly before an operating system crash or power cut. An application crash loses nothing. That makes journal_mode=WAL with synchronous=NORMAL the standard configuration for application databases. Like busy_timeout, synchronous is a per-connection setting and is not stored in the file, so it must be applied on every connection. Use FULL only when an individual commit must survive sudden power loss.

Source: https://www.sqlite.org/atomiccommit.html

sqlite performance

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