Postgres: set client encoding default When querying from certain tables, I'll often receive the error:

character with byte sequence 0xef 0xbf 0xbd in encoding "UTF8" has no equivalent in encoding "WIN1252"


Varying bytes, but you get the idea. I can  solve this by doing:

set client_encoding to 'UTF8';


But the (very) annoying thing is, I have to do this client_encoding set every. Single. Time. I open postgres. How do I set this to default?

Also, I am not asking how to change the encoding of a table's data, or of databases I create from now on--that's a different issue.
You can also set it as a default for any user or role (takes effect after a new connection is established):

ALTER ROLE &lt;rolename&gt; SET client_encoding = 'UTF8';