Create a Stunning Jupyter Notebook Setup: Install, Configure, and Customize

It’s time to break the cycle of repetitive work and set up a beautiful Jupyter environment.

Install Jupyter

Simply install Anaconda, which includes Jupyter.

Example environment:

python: 3.5.*

macOS: 10.12.4

Test the installation:

jupyter notebook

Configure IPython

Create a profile so that common imports load automatically: ipython profile create This creates ~/.ipython/profile_default/ with two files: ipython_config.py – runs for any IPython kernel. ipython_notebook_config.py – runs when a notebook starts.

Edit the desired config file and add: c = get_config() Then set the exec_lines attribute to import the libraries you need, for example:

c.InteractiveShellApp.exec_lines = [
    "import pandas as pd",
    "import numpy as np",
    "import scipy.stats as spstats",
    "import scipy as sp"
]

Configure Matplotlib

Enable inline plotting: %matplotlib inline Or add to the config: c.IPKernelApp.matplotlib = 'inline' Include the same imports as above, adding Matplotlib:

c.InteractiveShellApp.exec_lines = [
    "import pandas as pd",
    "import numpy as np",
    "import scipy.stats as spstats",
    "import scipy as sp",
    "import matplotlib.pyplot as plt"
]

Display Chinese Characters in Matplotlib

For Python 2.7, set the default encoding:

import sys
reload(sys)
sys.setdefaultencoding('utf8')

For Python 3, set the environment variable instead: export PYTHONIOENCODING="utf8" Or launch Jupyter with it: PYTHONIOENCODING="utf8" jupyter notebook Find a font that supports Chinese (e.g., Noto Sans CJK SC) and set it as the default:

import matplotlib as mpl
mpl.rc('font', family='Noto Sans CJK SC')

If you use Seaborn, ensure it does not overwrite the font setting:

import seaborn as sns
sns.set_style('ticks', {'font.family': ['Noto Sans CJK SC']})

Retina Display for Figures

Use the following command for high‑resolution figures: %config InlineBackend.figure_format = 'retina' Or add to the config:

c.InlineBackend.figure_format = 'retina'

Customize Notebook Appearance

Edit ~/.jupyter/custom/custom.css to change width and fonts, for example:

#notebook-container {
    max-width: 830px;
    padding: 40px;
}

pre.CodeMirror-line {
    font-family: 'BlinkMacSystemFont', 'Lucida Grande', 'Segoe UI', Ubuntu, Cantarell, sans-serif;
}

Install Common Jupyter Extensions

Two useful extensions are recommended:

jupyter_contrib_nbextensions – a collection of notebook extensions. Install from GitHub .

jupyter dashboards – lets you turn notebooks into dashboards. Install from GitHub .

After installation, the extensions appear in the notebook UI (see screenshots).

With the dashboard extension you can arrange cells as draggable panels and export a clean report without code cells.

All set – you now have a polished Jupyter notebook environment ready for development and presentation.