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Adding different Pythons versions in Jupyter notebooks

Sometimes you want to completely upgrade the Python that Jupyer uses, but sometimes you think it would be nice to have multiple versions of Python available in Jupyter. It’s pretty easy!

Before we get started, you’ll want to switch to the python that you’re interested in using in Jupyter. This might mean using pyenv shell, changing your virtualenv, or using a full path like /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin/python instead of just python.

In these commands, we’re going to go through three steps:

  1. Confirm our Python version
  2. Install the ipykernel package for managing Jupyter settings
  3. Use ipykernel to add a Jupyter kernel with a specific name
$ python --version
Python 3.8.2
$ python -m pip install ipykernel
$ python -m ipykernel install --user --name python3.8.2 --display-name "Python 3.8.2" 
Installed kernelspec python3.8.2 in /Users/soma/Library/Jupyter/kernels/python3.8.2

Now when we start up a new notebook, we can now pick whether we want the default Python 3 kernel or this special Python 3.8.2 kernel! Be sure to use all of the options:

  • If you don’t use --name, it will overwrite your default python3 kernelspec
  • If you don’t use --display-name it will be called Python 3 and you’ll get it confused with the default

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