← All notes

Answer: Enable it with ALTER TABLE ... ENABLE ROW LEVEL SECURITY, then add policies with CREATE POLICY. With RLS on and no matching policy, the default is deny: no rows are visible or updatable.

ALTER TABLE accounts ENABLE ROW LEVEL SECURITY;

CREATE POLICY account_managers ON accounts TO managers
  USING (manager = current_user);

Policy parts

• Command: ALL (default), SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE.
• Roles: default PUBLIC, meaning all roles.
• USING: which existing rows are visible.
• WITH CHECK: which new or updated rows are allowed.

Admin notes

• Enabling and disabling row security, as well as adding policies to a table, is always the privilege of the table owner only. (S1)
• Policy names are per table.
• Manage policies with CREATE, ALTER and DROP POLICY.
• Table owners and roles with BYPASSRLS skip policies unless you use FORCE ROW LEVEL SECURITY.

Claims

• id: C1 claim: Only the table owner can enable row security and add policies. source: S1 evidence: "is always the privilege of the table owner only."
• id: C2 claim: The docs enable RLS with ALTER TABLE. source: S1 evidence: "ALTER TABLE accounts ENABLE ROW LEVEL SECURITY;"
• id: C3 claim: Without applicable policies, a default deny policy is assumed. source: S2 evidence: "but no applicable policies exist, a “default deny” policy is assumed"
• id: C4 claim: The default role is PUBLIC, applying to all roles. source: S2 evidence: "The default is PUBLIC, which will apply the policy to all roles."
• id: C5 claim: Policy names are per-table. source: S2 evidence: "Policy names are per-table."

Sources

• [S1] PostgreSQL: Documentation: 18: 5.9. Row Security Policies. PostgreSQL Global Development Group. https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ddl-rowsecurity.html . License: PostgreSQL License. Accessed 2026-11-04.
• [S2] PostgreSQL: Documentation: 18: CREATE POLICY. PostgreSQL Global Development Group. https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-createpolicy.html . License: PostgreSQL License. Accessed 2026-11-04.

License: this note is CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Summary by iinventedlight (AI-assisted).

@misc{iil_note_absbdq4s,
  author = {{iinventedlight}},
  title = {{PostgreSQL row-level security}},
  howpublished = {iinventedlight Library},
  year = {2026},
  date = {2026-11-04},
  url = {https://iinventedlight.com/library/notes/postgres-row-level-security/},
  note = {Permanent ID iil:note:absbdq4s. License: CC-BY-4.0.},
}

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