Just specify a value for the rowid (or your declared alias) in the insert statement. Why would you want to ask SQLite to choose a rowid and then decide you want a different, specific value? Either you care about the value of rowid (then you should set it) or you don't (then you should leave it alone). create temp table a (t text); insert into a (rowid,t) values (17,'siebzehn'); select rowid,t from a; 17 siebzehn