diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 7fafa7ee..414d440b 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -42,7 +42,6 @@ Imports:
     dplyr,
     glue,
     lubridate,
-    methods,
     openssl,
     parallelly,
     purrr,
@@ -51,7 +50,7 @@ Imports:
     stringr,
     tidyr,
     tidyselect,
-    utils
+    withr
 Suggests:
     callr,
     conflicted,
@@ -73,8 +72,7 @@ Suggests:
     spelling,
     testthat (>= 3.0.0),
     tibble,
-    tidyverse,
-    withr
+    tidyverse
 Language: en-US
 URL: https://github.com/ssi-dk/SCDB, https://ssi-dk.github.io/SCDB/
 Config/testthat/edition: 3
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 6f59a9f3..abed282d 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,5 +1,9 @@
 # SCDB (development version)
 
+## Improvements and Fixes
+
+* `withr` added as a dependency rather than a suggested package (#238).
+
 
 # SCDB 0.6.2
 
diff --git a/R/connection.R b/R/connection.R
index 5a9b244c..32422f22 100644
--- a/R/connection.R
+++ b/R/connection.R
@@ -31,7 +31,10 @@
 #' @export
 get_connection <- function(drv, ...) {
   if (missing(drv)) {
-    get_connection.SQLiteDriver(drv = RSQLite::SQLite(), ...)
+    if (!rlang::is_installed("RSQLite")) {
+      stop("No `drv` provided to `get_connection` and `RSQLite` is not installed to act as default.", call. = FALSE)
+    }
+    get_connection(drv = RSQLite::SQLite(), ...)
   } else {
     UseMethod("get_connection")
   }
diff --git a/pak.lock b/pak.lock
index 50bf0cb6..3727318b 100644
--- a/pak.lock
+++ b/pak.lock
@@ -166,7 +166,7 @@
     },
     {
       "package": "duckdb",
-      "version": "1.5.4",
+      "version": "1.5.2",
       "binary": true
     },
     {
@@ -616,7 +616,7 @@
     },
     {
       "package": "shiny",
-      "version": "1.14.0",
+      "version": "1.13.0",
       "binary": true
     },
     {
@@ -741,12 +741,12 @@
     },
     {
       "package": "withr",
-      "version": "3.0.3",
+      "version": "3.0.2",
       "binary": true
     },
     {
       "package": "xfun",
-      "version": "0.59",
+      "version": "0.58",
       "binary": true
     },
     {
@@ -779,15 +779,5 @@
       "version": "3.0.0",
       "binary": true
     }
-  ],
-  "sysreqs": {
-    "os": "linux",
-    "distribution": "ubuntu",
-    "version": "24.04",
-    "url": {},
-    "pre_install": "apt-get -y update",
-    "install_scripts": "apt-get -y install libx11-dev git libcurl4-openssl-dev libssl-dev xz-utils cmake make libuv1-dev libgit2-dev zlib1g-dev pandoc unixodbc-dev libfreetype6-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libtiff-dev libwebp-dev libpq-dev libicu-dev libfontconfig1-dev libfribidi-dev libharfbuzz-dev libxml2-dev",
-    "post_install": {},
-    "packages": ["libx11-dev", "git", "libcurl4-openssl-dev", "libssl-dev", "xz-utils", "cmake", "make", "libuv1-dev", "libgit2-dev", "zlib1g-dev", "pandoc", "unixodbc-dev", "libfreetype6-dev", "libjpeg-dev", "libpng-dev", "libtiff-dev", "libwebp-dev", "libpq-dev", "libicu-dev", "libfontconfig1-dev", "libfribidi-dev", "libharfbuzz-dev", "libxml2-dev"]
-  }
+  ]
 }