- Matplotlib For Mac Software
- Matplotlib For Mac Operating System
- Matplotlib For Mac Pdf
- Brew Install Matplotlib
- Matplotlib Macd
Pip install matplotlib. Python will download the latest matplotlib library. Once done, open your development environment and import matplotlib. Anaconda environments. If you are have installed Anaconda, then by default, the basic Data Analysis packages, including Pandas and Matplotlib are already installed in your base. Matplotlib is a python 2D plotting library which produces publication quality figures in a variety of hardcopy formats and interactive environments across platforms. Matplotlib can be used in Python scripts, the Python and IPython shell (ala MATLAB or Mathematica), web application servers, and six graphical user interface toolkits.
First install Python 3.x:
- MacOS: Unable to import matplotlib.pyplot. Cause: In mac os image rendering back end of matplotlib (what-is-a-backend to render using the API of Cocoa by default). There is Qt4Agg and GTKAgg and as a back-end is not the default. Set the back end of macosx that is differ compare with other windows or linux os.
- Mac OS X: Start the Terminal application that is located in the Utilities folder in Applications; Linux: start one of the shells you have available, or an xterm or so. Download the testing file to your machine. Change directory into the folder you have downloaded the file to, and type: python test-python-installation-2021.py.
Even if you have an older version of Python, e.g., Python 3.2, on your laptop, you can still install a newer version, e.g., 3.5 or 3.6
On your Windows machine download and install the latest Python 3 Releasefrom Python Release for Windows
On your Mac, you need to download and install Mac OS version of Python 3 Release from Downloads for Python for Mac OS X
Second install Matplotlib:
Note: You must install Python 3.5 or 3.6 on your laptop before you install Matplotlib!

- On a Mac laptop:
After you have Python 3.5.1 installed, open a new Terminal.app (in Application/Utilities) window and type the following:
pip3 install matplotlib pip3 is the Python 3 version of pip. pip3 will install all the necessary libraries. Almost like magic!
I noticed the first time I ran a Python 3 program using the matplotlib, I received a warning that it was building a font cache and might take a minute.
- On a Windows laptop:
After you have Python 3.5.1 installed, open a new Command Prompt Window. You can do this by typing in 'Command Prompt' in the search box that pops up when you click the Start Button (more detailed directions here).
Once the Command Prompt (black) screen shows up, type the following:
pip3 install matplotlib pip3 is the Python 3 version of pip. pip3 will install all the necessary libraries. Almost like magic!
Now you're ready to import the Matplotlib and NumPy packages in IDLE. Try out a few plots by reading the Matplotlib Tutorial below.
Try Out Matplotlib:
Notice when you install Matplotlib, the numerical package NumPy is installed at the same time.
See CSCI 203 Matplotlib Tutorial to get started.
Try some examples in Matplotlib's Gallery.
I’ve got a weird problem with one of my Python scripts. It creates a chart with animation, and this animation works fine on Windows and Linux, but on Mac OS it just doesn’t show up. Here’s a video demonstration:
If video doesn’t play in your browser, you can download it here
The full script is published here.
To run the script I installed only matplotlib and numpy packages, so the environment on all 3 systems (Windows, Linux, Mac OS) should be the same. Just in case, here they are:

I’ve tried other simple plot animation samples (for instance, the ones from matplotlib documentation), and all of them work fine on Mac OS, so there has to be something wrong with my particular script. However, the fact that this very same script works on Windows and Linux confused me a lot. As a side note, you might have noticed that animation speed is different between Windows and Linux (the latter is faster), and I’ve no idea what could be the reason of that either, though it’s not so important here.
I’ve also tested my script on 3 other Macs with different Mac OS and Python versions installed, just to make sure that it’s not my environment who messes things up, but it was the same on all of them - no animation showing up.
After submitting a question at Stack Overflow and also at matplotlib forum, I thought about reading the documentation (classic).
The right backend
There I soon enough discovered the backends section. That helped me to google some more ideas, for instance this answer shown what’s needed to make animation from my script work in Jupyter notebook - just a single line in the very beginning of the script:
And then animation started to work. Okay, so what backend does Jupyter uses in this case then:
It returned TkAgg
- so that’s what can show animations in my script! Now I only need to set the same backend in my standalone script.
By the way, if you are curious, without %matplotlib Tk
Jupyter reports module://ipykernel.pylab.backend_inline
value for backend.
With pyplot.rcParams
Using the same print statement, I’ve discovered what backend is used by default when running my script in terminal: MacOSX
. Right then, so this backend is incapable to run my animation for some reason. But since I now know the backend that is capable, I’ve set it like this:
Matplotlib For Mac Software
But even though it reported a new backend in the output, the animation still wasn’t showing up:
Matplotlib For Mac Operating System
So setting the backend via plt.rcParams['backend']
isn’t supported? That’s a bit unexpected, as according to the documentation, it should be.
With matplotlib.use
Matplotlib For Mac Pdf
Anyway, after some more googling I’ve found this answer, and that was what finally worked:
Now my script runs and shows the animation. It also prints the following warning to the output:
Brew Install Matplotlib
…which is due to the fact that default Tcl/Tk on Mac OS is outdated (8.5
at the moment), and if you (like me) are getting Python from Homebrew, then it won’t be trivial to link it with the latest version of Tcl/Tk. But for now it works as it is, so it’s all good for the time being.
As it was pointed out in the bugreport, the line
is added anew to the plot each time inside animate()
function, instead of modifying existing line, and that’s what was causing the chart to go all rainbowy.
Matplotlib Macd
After fixing the script like this:
I now get the following result even with default MacOSX
backend:
If video doesn’t play in your browser, you can download it here
Almost good, except for this horizontal line (by the way, it’s not present with TkAgg
backend). Setting blit=False
gets rid of this line, and also causes the animation to play considerably slower (but that’s not really a problem).
