Using Jupyter within a virtual environment on macOS

This short guide will show you how to use Jupyter notebooks from within a Python virtual environment.

Firstly, check the list of available kernels: jupyter kernelspec list. You should see one kernel e.g. python3 which is your system installation of Python.

Then, create a virtual environment in your chosen way and install Jupyter. For example:

cd ~/environments
python3 -m venv test_env
source test_env/bin/activate
pip install jupyter

Then, go to ~/Library/Jupyter/kernels/ and create a new directory e.g. my_new_kernel.

Within this directory create a new file called kernel.json.

Insert the following into this file:

{
 "argv": [
  "/Users/imran/environments/test_env/bin/python",
  "-m",
  "ipykernel_launcher",
  "-f",
  "{connection_file}"
 ],
 "display_name": "my_new_kernel",
 "language": "python"
}

There are two things which you should edit:

• The first element of the argv list should be the absolute path to the Python executable within your virtual environment.
• You can edit display_name to whatever you choose. This will come up as an option under 'New' when creating a new notebook.

If you run jupyter kernelspec list again you should see your newly created kernel.

More information about how to configure Jupyter kernels can be found here.

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