TL;DR

Postgres 18 lands some cool new tricks—think UUIDv7, an Over explain module and composite index skip scans—but the real headline is native asynchronous I/O. In this episode, Hussein breaks down sync vs. async calls, revisits how Postgres 17 handled I/O, and then dives deep into the challenges that delayed async I/O in v18 and how the new worker and io_uring modes tackle them.

Along the way you’ll learn about the revamped io_method options (including the fallback sync mode), direct I/O support, backend-writer improvements, and what’s still on the roadmap for even faster disk operations.

Watch on YouTube