How to Add Conda Environment to Jupyter Lab

How to add conda environment to jupyter lab

A solution using nb_conda_kernels. First, install it in your base environment :

(base)$ conda install -c conda-forge nb_conda_kernels

Then in order to get a kernel for the conda_env cenv :

$ conda activate cenv
(cenv)$ conda install ipykernel
(cenv)$ conda deactivate

You will get a new kernel named Python [conda env:cenv] in your next run of jupyter lab / jupyter notebook

Note :
If you have installed nb_conda_kernels, and want to create a new conda environment and have it accessible right away then

conda create -n new_env_name ipykernel

will do the job.

How to connect R conda env to jupyter notebook

Jupyter does not automatically recognize Conda environments, activated or not.

Kernel Module

First, for an environment to run as a kernel, it must have the appropriate kernel package installed. For R environments, that is r-irkernel, so that one needs to run

conda install -n r_venv_conda r-irkernel

For Python kernels, it's ipykernel.

Kernel Registration

Second, kernels need to be registered with Jupyter. If one has Jupyter installed via Conda (say in an Anaconda base env), then I recommend using the nb_conda_kernels package, which enables auto-discovery of kernel-ready Conda environments. This must be installed in the environment that has jupyter installed (only one installation is needed!), for example, if this is base, then

conda install -n base nb_conda_kernels

Please read the documentation for details.

If using a system-level installation of Jupyter (i.e., not installed by Conda), then one needs to manually register the kernel. For example, something like

conda run -n r_venv_conda Rscript -e 'IRkernel::installspec(name="ir33", displayname="R 3.3")'

where one can set arbitrary values for name and displayname. See IRkernel for details.

Running Jupyter

If using a Conda-installed Jupyter, again, it only needs to be installed in a single env. This is the environment that should be activated before running jupyter notebook. The kernel will be available to select from within Jupyter.

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