Asynchronous IO in Postgres 18 TL;DR

Postgres 18 just landed with a bunch of goodies—from UUIDv7, an over-explain module and composite index skip scans to the long-awaited asynchronous I/O support. Hussein Nasser walks through the difference between sync vs async calls, revisits Postgres 17’s I/O approach, then dives into PG18’s new io_method options: worker threads, io_uring, and the fallback sync mode.

He also highlights ongoing work to bolster this async engine—think backend writer support, refined worker methods, direct I/O tweaks—and wraps up with key takeaways on how you can leverage these advancements for better DB performance.

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