How to change default Anaconda python environment
If you just want to temporarily change to another environment, use
source activate environment-name
ETA: This may be deprecated. I believe the current correct command is:
source conda activate environment-name
(you can create environment-name
with conda create
)
To change permanently, there is no method except creating a startup script that runs the above code.
Typically it's best to just create new environments. However, if you really want to change the Python version in the default environment, you can do so as follows:
First, make sure you have the latest version of conda by running
conda update conda
Then run
conda install python=3.5
This will attempt to update all your packages in your root environment to Python 3 versions. If it is not possible (e.g., because some package is not built for Python 3.5), it will give you an error message indicating which package(s) caused the issue.
If you installed packages with pip, you'll have to reinstall them.
Overview
Some people have multiple Conda environments with different versions of Python for compatibility reasons. In this case, you should activate the desired default environment in the shell initialization file (e.g., .bashrc
, .zshrc
). With this method, you can preserve the versions of Python you use in your environments.
The following assumes environment_name is the name of your environment
Mac / Linux:
Edit your bash profile so that the last line is conda activate environment_name
. In Mac OSX this is ~/.bash_profile
, in other environments this may be ~/.bashrc
Example:
Here's how I did it on Mac OSX
Open Terminal and type:
nano ~/.bash_profile
Go to end of file and type the following, where "p3.5" is my environment:
conda activate p3.5
Exit File. Start a new terminal window.
Type the following to see what environment is active
conda info -e
The result shows that I'm using my p3.5 environment by default.
For Windows:
Create a command file (.cmd) with activate environment_name
and follow these instructions to have it execute whenever you open a command prompt
- Create a batch file command, e.g. "my_conda.cmd", put it in the Application Data folder.
- Configure it to be started automatically whenever you open
cmd
. This setting is in Registry:
key: HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command Processor
value: AutoRun
type: REG_EXPAND_SZ
data: "%AppData%\my_conda.cmd"
from this answer: https://superuser.com/a/302553/143794