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EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS) <YOUR QUERY>

Take the result of this and paste it into https://explain.depesz.com/

which will make it human readable.

Understanding this is sometimes very easy, but if you want to understand what they _really_ mean, you can read depesz.com

I use it frequently - but I wish there was a tool which went into the semantics somewhat.

What do you mean by "went into the semantics"?

I have not tried it but PgMustard is stating that they make the query plans more explainable and hint for the problems in your query.

Wow, how have I never heard of this tool?! Thanks a lot for the link!

Be careful as it actually runs the query, so if it's a DELETE/INSERT/UPDATE it'll change the data. So run it in BEGIN/ROLLBACK block.