---
title: 'Remove superuser access from Studio'
description: 'Learn how to switch from the supabase_admin to postgres role in self-hosted Supabase.'
subtitle: 'Learn how to switch from the supabase_admin to postgres role in self-hosted Supabase.'
---

## Overview

In late 2022, Supabase introduced a security change in hosted projects that removed superuser access from the dashboard SQL editor and shifted ownership of user-created database objects away from `supabase_admin` toward the `postgres` role.
You can read more about it in the [official announcement](https://github.com/orgs/supabase/discussions/9314).

However, this migration was never automatically applied to self-hosted Supabase instances.

As a result:

- Objects created via the dashboard may still be owned by `supabase_admin`
- Behavior differs from the Supabase platform
- Some migrations may fail when run as `postgres`

This guide explains how to align your self-hosted Supabase instance with the security enhancements and ownership model used on the Supabase platform.

## Changing the configuration

### Step 1: Update database object ownership

Use the provided script to reassign ownership of database objects in the `public` schema from `supabase_admin` to `postgres`. From the project directory containing `docker-compose.yml`, run:

```sh
sh utils/reassign-owner.sh
```

<Admonition type="tip">

This script only updates ownership for database objects in the `public` schema. Supabase-managed and custom schemas are not affected.

</Admonition>

### Step 2: Update environment variables in docker-compose.yml

- In your `docker-compose.yml` configuration, uncomment the following line for the `studio` service to use the `postgres` role for read/write operations:

  ```yml name=docker-compose.yml
  studio:
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER_READ_WRITE: postgres
  ```

- Locate the `meta` service environment variables and change the `PG_META_DB_USER` environment variable from `supabase_admin` to `postgres`:

  ```yml name=docker-compose.yml
  meta:
    environment:
      PG_META_DB_USER: postgres
  ```

<Admonition type="tip">

Studio uses its own credentials to access Postgres via `postgres-meta`, so this change is only needed for backward compatibility and consistency.

</Admonition>

### Step 3: Restart Supabase

```sh
docker compose down && docker compose up -d
```

## Verify roles

After restarting your services, verify that Supabase Studio is now using the `postgres` role. Run the following query in the Supabase Studio SQL Editor:

```sql
select current_user;
-- expected result: postgres
```
