Install via pip or conda

Hint

If you’re unfamiliar with Python, we recommend using our MNE-Python installers instead.

MNE-Python requires Python version 3.8 or higher. If you need help installing Python, please refer to our Installing Python guide.

Installing MNE-Python with all dependencies

If you use Anaconda, we suggest installing MNE-Python into its own conda environment.

The dependency stack is large and may take a long time (several tens of minutes) to resolve on some systems via the default conda solver. We therefore highly recommend using the new libmamba solver instead, which is much faster. To permanently change to this solver, you can set CONDA_SOLVER=libmamba in your environment or run conda config --set solver libmamba. Below we just use --solver in each command.

Run in your terminal:

$ conda install --channel=conda-forge --name=base conda-libmamba-solver
$ conda create --solver=libmamba --override-channels --channel=conda-forge --name=mne mne

This will create a new conda environment called mne (you can adjust this by passing a different name via --name) and install all dependencies into it.

If you need to convert structural MRI scans into models of the scalp, inner/outer skull, and cortical surfaces, you will also need to install FreeSurfer.

Installing MNE-Python with core dependencies

If you only need MNE-Python’s core functionality, which includes 2D plotting (but does not support 3D visualization), install via pip:

$ pip install mne

or via conda:

$ conda create --override-channels --channel=conda-forge --name=mne mne-base

This will create a new conda environment called mne (you can adjust this by passing a different name via --name).

This minimal installation requires only a few dependencies. If you need additional functionality later on, you can install individual packages as needed.

Installing MNE-Python with HDF5 support

If you plan to use MNE-Python’s functions that require HDF5 I/O (this includes mne.io.read_raw_eeglab(), mne.SourceMorph.save(), and others), you should run via pip:

$ pip install mne[hdf5]

or via conda:

$ conda create --override-channels --channel=conda-forge --name=mne mne-base h5io h5py pymatreader

This will create a new conda environment called mne (you can adjust this by passing a different name via --name).

If you have already installed MNE-Python with core dependencies (e.g. via pip install mne), you can install these two packages to unlock HDF5 support:

$ pip install h5io pymatreader

Installing MNE-Python for other scenarios

The Advanced setup page has additional tips and tricks for special situations (servers, notebooks, CUDA, installing the development version, etc). The Contributing guide has additional installation instructions for (future) contributors to MNE-Python (e.g, extra dependencies for running our tests and building our documentation).

Python IDEs

Most users find it convenient to write and run their code in an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Some popular choices for scientific Python development are:

• Visual Studio Code (often shortened to “VS Code” or “vscode”) is a development-focused text editor that supports many programming languages in addition to Python, includes an integrated terminal console, and has a rich extension ecosystem. Installing Microsoft’s Python Extension is enough to get most Python users up and running. VS Code is free and open-source.

• Spyder is a free and open-source IDE developed by and for scientists who use Python. It is included by default in the base environment when you install Anaconda, and can be started from a terminal with the command spyder (or on Windows or macOS, launched from the Anaconda Navigator GUI). It can also be installed with dedicated installers. To avoid dependency conflicts with Spyder, you should install mne in a separate environment, as explained in previous sections. Then, instruct Spyder to use the mne environment as its default interpreter by opening Spyder and navigating to Tools > Preferences > Python Interpreter > Use the following interpreter. There, paste the output of the following terminal commands:

  $ conda activate mne
  $ python -c "import sys; print(sys.executable)"
  

  It should be something like C:\Users\user\anaconda3\envs\mne\python.exe (Windows) or /Users/user/opt/anaconda3/envs/mne/bin/python (macOS).

  If the Spyder console can not start because spyder-kernels is missing, install the required version in the mne environment with the following commands in the terminal, where you replace ... with the exact version of spyder-kernels that Spyder tells you it requires.

  $ conda activate mne
  $ conda install --override-channels --channel=conda-forge spyder-kernels=...
  

  Refer to the Spyder documentation for more information about spyder-kernels and the version matching.

  If the Spyder graphic backend is not set to inline but to e.g. Qt5, PyQt5 (pip) or pyqt (conda) must be installed in the mne environment.

• PyCharm is an IDE specifically for Python development that provides an all-in-one solution (no extension packages needed). PyCharm comes in a free and open-source Community edition as well as a paid Professional edition.