How to Run Jupyter Notebooks on MacOS Catalina — in Four Steps

Author(s): Pushkar Pushp

Originally published on Towards AI.

How to Run Jupyter Notebooks on MacOS Catalina — in Four Steps

In my previous blog, I walked you through all steps to run a jupyter notebook. If you’re a data scientist or developer and upgraded to macOS Catalina 10.15, then you might have faced some issues with the jupyter notebook. The latest version of Mac Catalina functionality is different than the previous s version. Follow the below steps to configure and run a jupyter notebook on the latest Catalina version.

There are four easy steps to configure a jupyter notebook.

Step I: Install the anaconda distribution.

The preferable way to go forward is to use a command-line installer instead of a graphic.

Use this link to download CLI https://repo.anaconda.com/archive/Anaconda3-2020.02-MacOSX-x86_64.sh

Once downloaded, go to the terminal and run.

shasum -a 256 /Downloads/Anaconda3-2020.02-MacOSX-x86_64.sh

The next step is to install anaconda with python3, not python2, as it is obsolete in use nowadays.

To start the installation, run below command in your terminal.

bash ~/Downloads/Anaconda3-2020.02-MacOSX-x86_64.sh

Instead of Downloads, use your installation path of anaconda distribution and similarly replace Anaconda3–2020.02-MacOSX-x86_64.sh with your filename.

The screen appears like this,

You need to press Enter here,

Read the license agreement and scroll to the bottom.

Enter yes. Next, it asks for a location to install.

Again Press Enter.

Once you press enter, message props, “Do you wish the installer to initialize Anaconda3 by running conda init?”

Enter Yes

The default shell for Catalina is zsh, so our next step is to install Zsh

Step II: Set-up macOS Terminal with Zsh

For Catalina

First set-up Xcode command-line tools, also known as Xcode-select

xcode-select --install

If there is some issue, try running the below script.

xcode-select — reset

Then you need to install a software package management system for macOS, i.e., Homebrew.

Run the below command.

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

The next step is to install a default shell for Catalina, i.e., zsh.
brew install zsh

brew install zsh

Now we need to integrate zsh in iterm2. If you are not having iterm2, install it using brew.

brew cask install iterm2

For zsh — iterm2 integration ,

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Step III: Conda, Pip, and Jupyter installation

Use brew to install conda, run below command.

brew cask install miniconda

Update conda to the latest version.

conda update conda

For pip, you can either use conda or easy install.

Conda way

conda install pip

Easy install way

sudo easy_install pip

For nbextensions run following command

conda install -c conda-forge jupyter_contrib_nbextensions

Lastly, for jupyter installation use, brew.

brew install jupyter

Step IV: Creating a Virtual environment and link it to ipykernel

I always prefer to create a virtual environment for my projects to avoid conflict of package dependencies.

To create a virtual environment, pass the name of the environment with the python version to be used. Suppose we want to create an environment named Cat and want to use the Python 3.8.2 version.

Run below command to create the ‘Cat’ environment.

conda create -n Cat python=3.8.2 anaconda

To activate the environment, pass Cat to conda activate.

conda activate Cat

Open a new Zsh window and install ipykernel.

pip install — user ipykernel

The next step is to link the kernel to the virtual environment.

python -m ipykernel install --user --name=Cat

If you want to display the name of the environment, say “Cat_Virtual.”, use below command.

python -m ipykernel install — user — name Cat — display-name “Cat_Virtual”

Go to iterm2 and run.

jupyter notebook

Open any notebook; it appears like this,

Enjoy! U+1F60A

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Published via Towards AI