Add conda to path windows

Things have been changed after conda 4.6.

Programs «Anaconda Prompt» and «Anaconda Powershell» expose the command conda for you automatically. Find them in your startup menu.

If you don’t wanna use the prompts above and try to make conda available in a standard cmd.exe or a standard Powershell. Read the following content.

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Expose conda in Every Shell

The purpose of the following content is to make command conda available both in cmd.exe and Powershell on Windows.

If you have already checked «Add Anaconda to my PATH environment variable» during Anaconda installation, skip step 1.

1. If Anaconda is installed for the current use only, add %USERPROFILE%\Anaconda3\condabin (I mean condabin, not Scripts) into the environment variable PATH (the user one). If Anaconda is installed for all users on your machine, add C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\condabin into PATH.

   How do I set system environment variables on Windows?

2. Open a new Powershell, run the following command once to initialize conda.

   conda init
   

These steps make sure the conda command is exposed into your cmd.exe and Powershell.

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Extended Reading: conda init from Conda 4.6

Caveat: Add the new \path\to\anaconda3\condabin but not \path\to\anaconda3\Scripts into your PATH. This is a big change introduced in conda 4.6.

Activation script initialization fron conda 4.6 release log

Conda 4.6 adds extensive initialization support so that more shells than ever before can use the new conda activate command. For more information, read the output from conda init –help We’re especially excited about this new way of working, because removing the need to modify PATH makes Conda much less disruptive to other software on your system.

In the old days, \path\to\anaconda3\Scripts is the one to be put into your PATH. It exposes command conda and the default Python from «base» environment at the same time.

After conda 4.6, conda related commands are separated into condabin. This makes it possible to expose ONLY command conda without activating the Python from «base» environment.

References

• Conda 4.6 Release
• How do I prevent Conda from activating the base environment?

First

Preparation

Open in window «Enviroment variables».
For doing this you need open properties your computer and select «Additional system parameters».

Second

In first or second line search «Path» and click button «Change», then «Create» and «Overview». Then add anaconda location, where you installed conda.
Default:

All users: «/ProgramData/Anaconda3/condabin/»;

Just me: «/Users//Anaconda3/condabin/»;

Custom Path. For searching conda use command: where conda.

Third

Test conda in command line.

conda —version

conda activate

conda deactivate

conda is an open source, cross-platform package and environment manager which runs on multiple platforms including Windows, Linux and macOS.

It was originally created for installing and managing multiple versions of Python packages, but can be extended to support many other languages such as R, Ruby, Lua, JavaScript, etc.

If you’re already familiar with Python, imagine conda as pip and virtualenv combined.

This article is going to show you how to fix conda “command not found” (in Linux and macOS) or “not recognized as internal or external command” in Windows.

Different form of the same error

Any OS has some kind of system variable containing the paths where they would find commonly-used executables, so that they can allow you to run these without specifying the full path. That system variable is called PATH or $PATH.

Let’s suppose the PATH contains /usr/local/sbin /usr/local/bin /usr/sbin /usr/bin /sbin /bin /usr/games /usr/local/games.

When you run, for example, conda, the OS is going to search for conda inside one of these path, if it’s found, it will be executed, if not, “command not found” error will be spit out.

The error message may look different across operating system and terminals. Usually on Linux, it could be bash: conda: command not found. On macOS with zsh, the error is zsh: command not found: conda. On Windows, conda not recognized as internal or external command would be displayed.

Please note that normally you would have to run conda using the full path, for example, /usr/bin/conda. PATH system variable enable a way to quickly reach commonly-used executables.

To sum it up, conda “command not found” (in Linux and macOS) or “conda not recognized as internal or external command” in Windows simply indicates that the operating system cannot find conda in one of the directories where executables are usually placed.

Add conda to PATH environment variable

The first thing you should do is to add conda to PATH environment variable. Normally this was done automatically by the Anaconda installer or package manager, but you need to be sure the OS knows where to look for conda.

On Linux

On Linux, you can add conda to PATH using export. Open up a terminal and run the following command.

export PATH=/path/to/anaconda3/bin:$PATHCode language: JavaScript (javascript)

Replace /path/to/anaconda3/bin to where you place anaconda3, usually it was installed in /home/your_username.

The command makes changes to the current session only and will not persistent though restarts.

If you don’t want to do this every time you start a session, you can add that command into .bashrc file so that it is starts up with the terminal.

echo 'export PATH=/path/to/anaconda3/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrcCode language: PHP (php)

On Windows

On Windows, you have to go to Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced System Settings, look for System Variables.

Under the System Variables section, find the row named Path and click Edit. You need to add

You need to add the Anaconda installation folder C:Usersyour_usernameAnaconda3 (replace your_username with your actual account name) to the list of paths.

Use conda init

init is a new command added to Conda v4.6 and later to ensure users have a properly configured terminal set up automatically.

We prefer adding conda to PATH ourselves, but if that doesn’t work out for you, maybe you should try running the following command:

Linux/UNIX (OS X < 10.15)

./anaconda3/bin/conda init

Mac OS X >= 10.15

./anaconda3/bin/conda init zsh

Windows

./anaconda3/Scripts/conda.exe init

zsh users

./anaconda3/bin/conda init zsh

The init command supports other shells, too, including bash, cmd.exe, fish, powershell, tcsh, xonsh, zsh.

Once the script is done running, you must launch a new terminal command for the settings to take effect.

If things didn’t go well, you can always reverse the changes made by conda init by running

./anaconda3/bin/conda init --reverse

Set up zsh to read .bashrc

If you’re just switching to zsh and getting the following error message, you might not set up zsh to read .bashrc.

In any terminal, run nano ~/.zshrc to edit zsh configuration file and add the following line to it.

source ~/.bash_profile

Now close your terminal and open it all over again, verify that zsh now loads bash configuration and conda works again.

conda not recognized on Windows

On Windows, you should get 'Conda' is not recognized as internal or external command if the OS does not find it in the PATH.

Recent Windows 10 releases does not assume you have administrator privileges to install or update. You can force administrative re-installation by right-click on the Anaconda Command Prompt, choose “Run as administrator“.

Alternatively, you can use Anaconda Navigator or the Anaconda Command Prompt (located in the Start Menu under “Anaconda”) when you wish to use Anaconda software, as per Anaconda recommendation.

conda not found in Git Bash

If you use Git Bash on Windows, it is out of conda init support.

In order to manually configure conda to work with the Git Bash shell, you need to add conda.sh from Anaconda3 installation into .bashrc.

First, open up C:ProgramDataAnaconda3etcprofile.d, right-click in any blank space and select Git Bash Here to open up a new Git Bash terminal right where you are now.

After that, copy and paste the following command into the terminal and run it.

echo ". '${PWD}'/conda.sh" >> ~/.bashrcCode language: PHP (php)

Basically it puts a new line in the current .bashrc configuration file that loads conda.sh every time it starts.

We hope that you’ve learned how to fix conda “command not found” error and get it to work again. Conda is a great package manager designed specifically for data scientist and the users who are not familiar with Python, pip and pipenv/virtualenv as a whole.

If you want to learn more about Python, check out our other posts about common errors in Python such as “too many values to unpack” or locale.Error: unsupported locale setting.