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# Installation

See also

Installing Jupyter

  Nbconvert is part of the Jupyter ecosystem.

## Supported Python versions

Currently Python 3.9-3.12 is supported and tested by nbconvert.

## Installing nbconvert

Nbconvert is packaged for both pip and conda, so you can install it with:

    pip install nbconvert

    # OR

    conda install nbconvert

The Miniconda and Miniforge distributions both provide a minimal conda installation.

Important

To unlock its full capabilities, nbconvert requires Pandoc, TeX (specifically, XeLaTeX) and playwright. These must be installed separately.

## Installing Pandoc

For converting markdown to formats other than HTML, nbconvert uses Pandoc (1.12.1 or later).

To install pandoc on Linux, you can generally use your package manager:

    sudo apt-get install pandoc

On other platforms, you can get pandoc from their website.

## Installing TeX

For converting notebooks to PDF (with `--to pdf`), nbconvert makes use of LaTeX and the XeTeX as the rendering engine.

Added in version 5.0: We use XeTeX as the rendering engine rather than pdfTeX (as in earlier versions). XeTeX can access fonts through native operating system libraries, it has better support for OpenType formatted fonts and Unicode characters.

To install a complete TeX environment (including XeLaTeX and the necessary supporting packages) by hand can be tricky. Fortunately, there are packages that make this much easier. These packages are specific to different operating systems:

- Linux: TeX Live

  - E.g. on Debian or Ubuntu:

        sudo apt-get install texlive-xetex texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-plain-generic

- macOS (OS X): MacTeX.

- Windows: Latex Project.

Because nbconvert depends on packages and fonts included in standard TeX distributions, if you do not have a complete installation, you may not be able to use nbconvert’s standard tooling to convert notebooks to PDF.

## Installing Chromium

For converting notebooks to PDF with `--to webpdf`, nbconvert requires the playwright Chromium automation library.

Playwright makes use of a specific version of Chromium. If it does not find a suitable installation of the web browser, it can automatically download it if the `--allow-chromium-download` flag is passed to the command line.

To install a suitable version of playwright, you can pip install `nbconvert[webpdf]`.

### PDF conversion on a limited TeX environment

If you are only able to install a limited TeX environment, there are two main routes you could take to convert to PDF:

1. Using TeX by hand

     1. You could convert to `.tex` directly; this requires Pandoc.

     2. edit the file to accord with your local environment

     3. run `xelatex` directly.

2. Custom exporter

     1. You could write a custom exporter that takes your system’s limitations into account.