Getting Navicat To Work With MAMP Pro MySQL

After recently deciding to switch to Navicat on my MacBook Pro from Sequel Pro, I encountered an issue where Navicat couldn’t connect to my MySQL server using either localhost or the local IP of 127.0.0.1. This is because MAMP will start the MySQL server using a socket. This just means you need to tell Navicat where your socket server is.

When creating a new connection you should see tabs; General, Advanced, SSL, SSH and HTTP. We want to specify the socket in the advanced tab.

You should see the following (as pictured below):

In the “Use socket file” field copy and paste this: /Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock

Now hit “Test Connection” and everything should work. You’ve now got Navicat working with your MAMP MySQL.