Kafka Console Overview
The Console keeps a Kafka producer and consumer in each topic tab. Read, inspect, and send messages without switching views.
Kafka producer and consumer in one tab
The upper half reads records from the topic. Start from the newest or oldest records, start from a timestamp, tail new records with Live, or use Watch Group to follow what a selected consumer group reads.
The producer stays open below. Send one record, a batch, or a timed loop. Pro can also produce records from a file. Refresh the snapshot to see what you sent, or use Live to watch it arrive.
See Consuming messages and Producing messages for the available controls.
Working with topic tabs
Select + and choose a topic, or open one from global search. Each topic opens in its own tab.
Tabs stay open while you work, so you can keep several investigations active. Each cluster has its own set of tabs, preventing local and production work from being mixed together.
Select the expand icon on the right side of the Console to open the topic details drawer. Check topic health, message count, retention, partitions, and consumer groups without leaving the tab.
Inspecting and reusing messages
Expand a message to see its key, value, headers, partition, offset, and timestamp. When a Schema Registry is configured, Avro and Protobuf payloads decode automatically.
You can replay the message to a topic in the same cluster, forward it to another cluster, or export messages as CSV, JSON, or JSONL. See Replay & export.