My plot in ipython does not show with pyplot.show()

Question

Help required displaying matplotlib plots in ipython. I did not forget to call pyplot.show().

$ ipython --pylab

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.plot(range(20), range(20))

It returns matplotlib.lines.Line2D at 0xade2b2c as the output.

plt.show()

Nothing happens. No error message. No new window. I installed matplotlib with pip, and no error messages occurred.

Details:

I use,

Ubuntu
IPython v0.11
Python v2.6.6
matplotlib v1.0.1

`pylab` is dead. [Which is the recommended way to plot: matplotlib or pylab?](https://stackoverflow.com/q/16849483/7758804). Disregard answers with `pylab`. — Trenton McKinney, Apr 08 '23 at 18:53

unutbu · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-27T02:00:57.383

If I set my backend to template in ~/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc, then I can reproduce your symptoms:

~/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc:

# backend      : GtkAgg
backend      : template

Note that the file matplotlibrc may not be in directory ~/.matplotlib/. In this case, the following code shows where it is:

>>> import matplotlib
>>> matplotlib.matplotlib_fname()

In [1]: import matplotlib.pyplot as p

In [2]: p.plot(range(20),range(20))
Out[2]: [<matplotlib.lines.Line2D object at 0xa64932c>]

In [3]: p.show()

If you edit ~/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc and change the backend to something like GtkAgg, you should see a plot. You can list all the backends available on your machine with

import matplotlib.rcsetup as rcsetup
print(rcsetup.all_backends)

It should return a list like:

['GTK', 'GTKAgg', 'GTKCairo', 'FltkAgg', 'MacOSX', 'QtAgg', 'Qt4Agg',
'TkAgg', 'WX', 'WXAgg', 'CocoaAgg', 'agg', 'cairo', 'emf', 'gdk', 'pdf',
'ps', 'svg', 'template']

Reference:

Customizing matplotlib

Christopher Lee · Answer 2 · 2013-01-10T04:17:29.287

I ran into the exact same problem on Ubuntu 12.04, because I installed matplotlib (within a virtualenv) using

pip install matplotlib

To make long story short, my advice is: don't try to install matplotlib using pip or by hand; let a real package manager (e.g. apt-get / synaptic) install it and all its dependencies for you.

Unfortunately, matplotlib's backends (alternative methods for actually rendering your plots) have all sorts of dependencies that pip will not deal with. Even worse, it fails silently; that is, pip install matplotlib appears to install matplotlib successfully. But when you try to use it (e.g. pyplot.show()), no plot window will appear. I tried all the different backends that people on the web suggest (Qt4Agg, GTK, etc.), and they all failed (i.e. when I tried to import matplotlib.pyplot, I get ImportError because it's trying to import some dependency that's missing). I then researched how to install those dependencies, but it just made me want to give up using pip (within virtualenv) as a viable installation solution for any package that has non-Python package dependencies.

The whole experience sent me crawling back to apt-get / synaptic (i.e. the Ubuntu package manager) to install software like matplotlib. That worked perfectly. Of course, that means you can only install into your system directories, no virtualenv goodness, and you are stuck with the versions that Ubuntu distributes, which may be way behind the current version...

score 46 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 08 '23 at 19:12

46

Add %matplotlib inline once to the notebook, prior to plotting.

edited Apr 08 '23 at 19:12

Trenton McKinney

56,955
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answered Mar 18 '15 at 12:16

grampus

461
4
3

score 13 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 04 '16 at 00:42

13

Just type:

plt.ion()

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zmV8lZsHF4 at 23:30 !

plt is used because of my import: import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

I'm using python2.7 on a mac with iTerm2.

edited Nov 04 '16 at 00:42

StefanM

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answered Nov 03 '16 at 20:26

tnuts

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score 11 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 13 '12 at 12:25

For future reference,

I have encountered the same problem -- pylab was not showing under ipython. The problem was fixed by changing ipython's config file {ipython_config.py}. In the config file

c.InteractiveShellApp.pylab = 'auto'

I changed 'auto' to 'qt' and now I see graphs

score 10 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 16 '16 at 05:30

10

What solved my problem was just using the below two lines in ipython notebook at the top

%matplotib inline
%pylab inline

And it worked. I'm using Ubuntu16.04 and ipython-5.1

answered Sep 16 '16 at 05:30

Bhanu Pratap Singh

1,017
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12
15

`pylab` is dead. [Which is the recommended way to plot: matplotlib or pylab?](https://stackoverflow.com/q/16849483/7758804) – Trenton McKinney Apr 08 '23 at 18:48

score 3 · Answer 7 · edited Aug 06 '16 at 11:49

3

Adding the following two lines before importing pylab seems to work for me

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use("gtk")

import sys
import pylab
import numpy as np

edited Aug 06 '16 at 11:49

Tunaki

132,869
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answered Aug 06 '16 at 06:21

Pau

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score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Jun 02 '16 at 15:09

I had to install matplotlib from source to get this to work. The key instructions (from http://www.pyimagesearch.com/2015/08/24/resolved-matplotlib-figures-not-showing-up-or-displaying/) are:

$ workon plotting
$ pip uninstall matplotlib
$ git clone https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib.git
$ cd matplotlib
$ python setup.py install

By changing the backend, as @unutbu says, I just ran into loads more problems with all the different backends not working either.

score 2 · Answer 9 · answered May 08 '17 at 05:16

2

Similar to @Rikki, I solved this problem by upgrading matplotlib with pip install matplotlib --upgrade. If you can't upgrade uninstalling and reinstalling may work.

pip uninstall matplotlib
pip install matplotlib

answered May 08 '17 at 05:16

Seanny123

8,776
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score 1 · Answer 10 · edited Aug 25 '17 at 11:53

1

After running your code include:

import pylab as p
p.show()

edited Aug 25 '17 at 11:53

Qiu

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answered Aug 25 '17 at 11:30

Shrish Trivedi

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5

`pylab` is dead. [Which is the recommended way to plot: matplotlib or pylab?](https://stackoverflow.com/q/16849483/7758804) – Trenton McKinney Oct 10 '22 at 15:57

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered May 13 '14 at 13:34

0

Be sure to have this startup script enabled : ( Preferences > Console > Advanced Options )

/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/spyderlib/scientific_startup.py

If the standard PYTHONSTARTUP is enabled you won't have an interactive plot

answered May 13 '14 at 13:34

Covich

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score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Jul 13 '17 at 20:30

For me the problem happens if I simply create an empty matplotlibrc file under ~/.matplotlib on macOS. Adding "backend: macosx" in it fixes the problem.

I think it is a bug: if backend is not specified in my matplotlibrc it should take the default value.

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Sep 03 '21 at 16:32

0

if you are a nube from ruby, don't forget the parenthesis - show()

answered Sep 03 '21 at 16:32

Taylored Web Sites

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score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Jan 06 '23 at 22:28

If you are working with yolov5 the fixes described here might not work as in my case. YOLOv5 developers have turned off the preview of the images using plt.show(), so most likely this will happen to you. To resolve make sure that your environment is correctly configured using requirements.txt file that comes with yolov5 and then use the workaround:

import torch
import matplotlib

model = torch.hub.load('ultralytics/yolov5', 'yolov5s') # Load model first
matplotlib.use('TkAgg') # Change backend after loading model

as described here: https://github.com/ultralytics/yolov5/issues/2779 you can also try another backend from the ones mentioned above like 'Qt4Agg' or smth else.

score 0 · Answer 15 · answered Apr 08 '23 at 01:28

This is not a great long-term solution, but if none of this is working for you, you can get around it by using this instead of p.show():

p.savefig("output_plot.png")

This will create the plot image in the same directory. You can open it separately in a normal image viewer.

score -1 · Answer 16 · edited Jul 15 '18 at 20:26

-1

I found that I needed window = Tk() and then window.mainloop()

edited Jul 15 '18 at 20:26

Ralf Stubner

26,263
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answered Jul 15 '18 at 20:06

R Keene

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score -2 · Answer 17 · answered Oct 02 '13 at 15:37

For Ubuntu 12.04:

sudo apt-get install python-qt4
virtualenv .env --no-site-packages
source .env/bin/activate
easy_install -U distribute
ln -s /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PyQt4 .
ln -s /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/sip.so .
pip install matplotlib

My plot in ipython does not show with pyplot.show()

$ ipython --pylab

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