📒 How to start a Jupyter Notebook

Dear future me, I know you are going to forget — again — how to launch a Jupyter Notebook.
So here’s a quick guide, for you and for anyone else who stumbles upon this page.

Step 1 — Create a project folder

Open the command prompt and create a new project folder. Why? Because you don’t want to install packages globally and risk breaking your other projects.
Keeping things clean is your watchword (though it clearly doesn’t apply to your desk right now).

mkdir my_project
cd my_project

Step 2 — Create your virtual environment

python -m venv venv

Step 3 — Activate the virtual environment

On Windows:

.\venv\Scripts\activate

Step 4 — Install Jupyter

pip install notebook

Step 5 — Launch Jupyter Notebook

jupyter notebook

Or, if you prefer Jupyter Lab:

pip install jupyterlab
jupyter lab

Fig. 1: Starting interface showing the 'venv' folder.

Step 6 — Create the first notebook

To keep things organized, create a new folder (e.g., notebooks) at the same level as venv folder.

1. In the Jupyter interface, click “New” → “Folder”
2. Rename the folder to something like notebooks
3. Enter the folder
4. Click “New” → “Python 3” to create the first notebook!

Fig. 2: Jupyter interface showing the test notebook file.

That’s it! Good luck with your new project :)

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P.S. Don’t forget to deactivate the environment when you’re done:

deactivate