%matplotlib widget run time error

[PaolaGith]

Hello,
I saw an old issue about this topic, but I could not find a recent solution.
I am using a Linux machine, Python version 3.12.4. I created my environment and I installed matplotlib by using
pip install matplotlib

But when I run my code in VS code, I get a runtime error related to %matplotlib widget

RuntimeError Traceback (most recent call last)
File ~/.conda/envs/s_i/lib/python3.12/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/registry.py:413, in BackendRegistry.resolve_gui_or_backend(self, gui_or_backend)
412 try:
--> 413 return self.resolve_backend(gui_or_backend)
414 except Exception: # KeyError ?

File ~/.conda/envs/s_i/lib/python3.12/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/registry.py:375, in BackendRegistry.resolve_backend(self, backend)
374 if gui is None:
--> 375 raise RuntimeError(f"'{backend}' is not a recognised backend name")
377 return backend, gui if gui != "headless" else None

RuntimeError: 'widget' is not a recognised backend name

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

RuntimeError Traceback (most recent call last)
Cell In[3], line 8
3 from pathlib import Path
5 #import ephyviewer
6 #import spikeinterface_gui as sigui
----> 8 get_ipython().run_line_magic('matplotlib', 'widget')
9 get_ipython().run_line_magic('matplotlib', 'inline')
10 #%matplotlib notebook
...
414 except Exception: # KeyError ?
--> 415 raise RuntimeError(
416 f"'{gui_or_backend} is not a recognised GUI loop or backend name")

RuntimeError: 'widget is not a recognised GUI loop or backend name

Have you found a solution for this issue?
thank you

[ianthomas23]

Please can you tell us what versions of packages you have installed by running pip list?

[PaolaGith]

Sure,

Package Version Editable project location

---

aiobotocore 2.7.0
aiohttp 3.9.3
aioitertools 0.7.1
aiosignal 1.2.0
alabaster 0.7.12
altair 5.0.1
anaconda-anon-usage 0.4.3
anaconda-catalogs 0.2.0
anaconda-client 1.12.3
anaconda-cloud-auth 0.1.4
anaconda-navigator 2.5.2
anaconda-project 0.11.1
anyio 4.2.0
appdirs 1.4.4
archspec 0.2.1
argon2-cffi 21.3.0
argon2-cffi-bindings 21.2.0
arrow 1.2.3
asciitree 0.3.3
astroid 2.14.2
astropy 5.3.4
asttokens 2.0.5
async-lru 2.0.4
atomicwrites 1.4.0
attrs 23.1.0
Automat 20.2.0
autopep8 1.6.0
Babel 2.11.0
backports.functools-lru-cache 1.6.4
backports.tempfile 1.0
backports.weakref 1.0.post1
bcrypt 3.2.0
beautifulsoup4 4.12.2
binaryornot 0.4.4
black 23.11.0
bleach 4.1.0
blinker 1.6.2
bokeh 3.3.4
boltons 23.0.0
botocore 1.31.64
Bottleneck 1.3.7
Brotli 1.0.9
cachetools 4.2.2
cbor2 5.6.4
certifi 2024.2.2
cffi 1.16.0
chardet 4.0.0
charset-normalizer 2.0.4
click 8.1.7
cloudpickle 2.2.1
clyent 1.2.2
colorama 0.4.6
colorcet 3.0.1
comm 0.1.2
conda 24.1.2
conda-build 24.1.2
conda-content-trust 0.2.0
conda_index 0.4.0
conda-libmamba-solver 24.1.0
conda-pack 0.6.0
conda-package-handling 2.2.0
conda_package_streaming 0.9.0
conda-repo-cli 1.0.75
conda-token 0.4.0
conda-verify 3.4.2
constantly 23.10.4
contourpy 1.2.0
cookiecutter 2.5.0
cryptography 42.0.2
cssselect 1.2.0
cuda-python 12.5.0
cycler 0.11.0
cytoolz 0.12.2
dask 2023.11.0
datashader 0.16.0
debugpy 1.6.7
decorator 5.1.1
defusedxml 0.7.1
diff-match-patch 20200713
dill 0.3.7
distinctipy 1.3.4
distributed 2023.11.0
distro 1.8.0
docstring-to-markdown 0.11
docutils 0.18.1
entrypoints 0.4
et-xmlfile 1.1.0
executing 0.8.3
fasteners 0.19
fastjsonschema 2.16.2
figurl 0.2.22
filelock 3.13.1
flake8 6.0.0
Flask 2.2.5
fonttools 4.25.0
fqdn 1.5.1
frozenlist 1.4.0
fsspec 2023.10.0
future 0.18.3
gensim 4.3.0
gitdb 4.0.7
GitPython 3.1.37
gmpy2 2.1.2
greenlet 3.0.1
h5py 3.9.0
hdmf 3.14.2
HeapDict 1.0.1
holoviews 1.18.3
hvplot 0.9.2
hyperlink 21.0.0
idna 3.4
imagecodecs 2023.1.23
imageio 2.33.1
imagesize 1.4.1
imbalanced-learn 0.11.0
importlib-metadata 7.0.1
incremental 22.10.0
inflection 0.5.1
iniconfig 1.1.1
intake 0.6.8
intervaltree 3.1.0
ipykernel 6.28.0
ipympl 0.9.4
ipython 8.20.0
ipython-genutils 0.2.0
ipywidgets 7.6.5
isoduration 20.11.0
isort 5.9.3
isosplit6 0.1.4
itemadapter 0.3.0
itemloaders 1.1.0
itsdangerous 2.0.1
jaraco.classes 3.2.1
jedi 0.18.1
jeepney 0.7.1
jellyfish 1.0.1
Jinja2 3.1.3
jmespath 1.0.1
joblib 1.2.0
json5 0.9.6
jsonpatch 1.32
jsonpointer 2.1
jsonschema 4.19.2
jsonschema-specifications 2023.7.1
jupyter 1.0.0
jupyter_client 8.6.0
jupyter-console 6.6.3
jupyter_core 5.5.0
jupyter-events 0.8.0
jupyter-lsp 2.2.0
jupyter_server 2.10.0
jupyter_server_terminals 0.4.4
jupyterlab 4.0.11
jupyterlab-pygments 0.1.2
jupyterlab_server 2.25.1
jupyterlab-widgets 3.0.9
kachery-cloud 0.4.9
keyring 23.13.1
kiwisolver 1.4.4
lazy_loader 0.3
lazy-object-proxy 1.6.0
lckr_jupyterlab_variableinspector 3.1.0
libarchive-c 2.9
libmambapy 1.5.6
linkify-it-py 2.0.0
llvmlite 0.42.0
lmdb 1.4.1
locket 1.0.0
lxml 4.9.3
lz4 4.3.2
Markdown 3.4.1
markdown-it-py 2.2.0
MarkupSafe 2.1.3
matplotlib 3.8.0
matplotlib-inline 0.1.6
mccabe 0.7.0
mdit-py-plugins 0.3.0
mdurl 0.1.0
menuinst 2.0.2
mistune 2.0.4
mkl-fft 1.3.8
mkl-random 1.2.4
mkl-service 2.4.0
more-itertools 10.1.0
mountainsort5 0.5.6
mpmath 1.3.0
msgpack 1.0.3
multidict 6.0.4
multipledispatch 0.6.0
munkres 1.1.4
mypy 1.8.0
mypy-extensions 1.0.0
navigator-updater 0.4.0
nbclient 0.8.0
nbconvert 7.10.0
nbformat 5.9.2
neo 0.13.1
nest-asyncio 1.6.0
networkx 3.1
nltk 3.8.1
notebook 7.0.8
notebook_shim 0.2.3
numba 0.59.0
numcodecs 0.12.1
numexpr 2.8.7
numpy 1.26.4
numpydoc 1.5.0
openpyxl 3.0.10
overrides 7.4.0
packaging 23.1
pandas 2.1.4
pandocfilters 1.5.0
panel 1.3.8
param 2.0.2
parsel 1.8.1
parso 0.8.3
partd 1.4.1
pathlib 1.0.1
pathspec 0.10.3
patsy 0.5.3
pexpect 4.8.0
pickleshare 0.7.5
pillow 10.2.0
pip 23.3.1
pkce 1.0.3
pkginfo 1.9.6
platformdirs 3.10.0
plotly 5.9.0
pluggy 1.0.0
ply 3.11
probeinterface 0.2.21
prometheus-client 0.14.1
prompt-toolkit 3.0.43
Protego 0.1.16
protobuf 3.20.3
psutil 5.9.0
ptyprocess 0.7.0
pubnub 8.0.0
pure-eval 0.2.2
py-cpuinfo 9.0.0
pyarrow 14.0.2
pyasn1 0.4.8
pyasn1-modules 0.2.8
pycodestyle 2.10.0
pycosat 0.6.6
pycparser 2.21
pycryptodomex 3.20.0
pyct 0.5.0
pycurl 7.45.2
pydantic 1.10.12
pydeck 0.8.0
PyDispatcher 2.0.5
pydocstyle 6.3.0
pyerfa 2.0.0
pyflakes 3.0.1
Pygments 2.15.1
PyJWT 2.4.0
pylint 2.16.2
pylint-venv 2.3.0
pyls-spyder 0.4.0
pynwb 2.8.1
pyodbc 5.0.1
pyOpenSSL 24.0.0
pyparsing 3.0.9
PyQt5 5.15.10
PyQt5-sip 12.13.0
PyQtWebEngine 5.15.6
PySocks 1.7.1
pytest 7.4.0
python-dateutil 2.8.2
python-dotenv 0.21.0
python-json-logger 2.0.7
python-lsp-black 1.2.1
python-lsp-jsonrpc 1.0.0
python-lsp-server 1.7.2
python-slugify 5.0.2
python-snappy 0.6.1
pytoolconfig 1.2.6
pytz 2023.3.post1
pyviz_comms 3.0.0
pywavelets 1.5.0
pyxdg 0.27
PyYAML 6.0.1
pyzmq 25.1.2
QDarkStyle 3.0.2
qstylizer 0.2.2
QtAwesome 1.2.2
qtconsole 5.4.2
QtPy 2.4.1
quantities 0.15.0
queuelib 1.6.2
referencing 0.30.2
regex 2023.10.3
requests 2.31.0
requests-file 1.5.1
requests-toolbelt 1.0.0
rfc3339-validator 0.1.4
rfc3986-validator 0.1.1
rich 13.3.5
rope 1.7.0
rpds-py 0.10.6
Rtree 1.0.1
ruamel.yaml 0.17.21
ruamel-yaml-conda 0.17.21
s3fs 2023.10.0
scikit-image 0.22.0
scikit-learn 1.2.2
scipy 1.11.4
Scrapy 2.8.0
seaborn 0.12.2
SecretStorage 3.3.1
semver 2.13.0
Send2Trash 1.8.2
service-identity 18.1.0
setuptools 68.2.2
simplejson 3.19.2
sip 6.7.12
six 1.16.0
smart-open 5.2.1
smmap 4.0.0
sniffio 1.3.0
snowballstemmer 2.2.0
sortedcontainers 2.4.0
sortingview 0.13.4
soupsieve 2.5
Sphinx 5.0.2
sphinxcontrib-applehelp 1.0.2
sphinxcontrib-devhelp 1.0.2
sphinxcontrib-htmlhelp 2.0.0
sphinxcontrib-jsmath 1.0.1
sphinxcontrib-qthelp 1.0.3
sphinxcontrib-serializinghtml 1.1.5
spikeinterface 0.101.0rc0 /home/Paola/spikeinterface
spyder 5.4.3
spyder-kernels 2.4.4
SQLAlchemy 2.0.25
stack-data 0.2.0
statsmodels 0.14.0
streamlit 1.30.0
sympy 1.12
tables 3.9.2
tabulate 0.9.0
tblib 1.7.0
tenacity 8.2.2
terminado 0.17.1
text-unidecode 1.3
textdistance 4.2.1
threadpoolctl 3.5.0
three-merge 0.1.1
tifffile 2023.4.12
tinycss2 1.2.1
tldextract 3.2.0
toml 0.10.2
tomlkit 0.11.1
toolz 0.12.0
tornado 6.3.3
tqdm 4.65.0
traitlets 5.7.1
truststore 0.8.0
Twisted 23.10.0
typing_extensions 4.9.0
tzdata 2023.3
tzlocal 2.1
uc-micro-py 1.0.1
ujson 5.4.0
Unidecode 1.2.0
uri-template 1.3.0
urllib3 2.0.7
validators 0.18.2
w3lib 2.1.2
watchdog 2.1.6
wcwidth 0.2.5
webcolors 24.6.0
webencodings 0.5.1
websocket-client 0.58.0
Werkzeug 2.2.3
whatthepatch 1.0.2
wheel 0.41.2
widgetsnbextension 3.5.2
wrapt 1.14.1
wurlitzer 3.0.2
xarray 2023.6.0
xyzservices 2022.9.0
yapf 0.31.0
yarl 1.9.3
zarr 2.17.2
zict 3.0.0
zipp 3.17.0
zope.interface 5.4.0
zstandard 0.19.0

Thanks!

[ianthomas23]

The runtime error is reported in the file lib/matplotlib/backends/registry.py which was added to Matplotlib in version 3.9.0. Your environment claims that it only has Matplotlib 3.8.0. So either your environment is messed up, or VSCode has some other version of Matplotlib that it is using here. Given that you are using a conda environment but you have used pip install matplotlib into it, I suspect the former. Combining conda install and pip install in the same environment can often cause problems.

To exclude VSCode as the source of the problem you could run jupyter lab or notebook from the command line using this environment and run your %matplotlib widget code in that to see what happens.

You could also run conda list and see how the output compares to your pip list.

[PaolaGith]

Thanks for your answer.
I was able to run my code using jupyter notebook and I did not get the error for %matplotlib widget.
Here is the conda list:

packages in environment at /home/Paola/.conda/envs/s_i:

Name Version Build Channel

_libgcc_mutex 0.1 main
_openmp_mutex 5.1 1_gnu
anyio 4.4.0 pypi_0 pypi
argon2-cffi 23.1.0 pypi_0 pypi
argon2-cffi-bindings 21.2.0 pypi_0 pypi
arrow 1.3.0 pypi_0 pypi
asciitree 0.3.3 pypi_0 pypi
asttokens 2.4.1 pypi_0 pypi
async-lru 2.0.4 pypi_0 pypi
attrs 23.2.0 pypi_0 pypi
babel 2.15.0 pypi_0 pypi
beautifulsoup4 4.12.3 pypi_0 pypi
bleach 6.1.0 pypi_0 pypi
bzip2 1.0.8 h5eee18b_6
ca-certificates 2024.3.11 h06a4308_0
certifi 2024.7.4 pypi_0 pypi
cffi 1.16.0 pypi_0 pypi
charset-normalizer 3.3.2 pypi_0 pypi
comm 0.2.2 pypi_0 pypi
contourpy 1.2.1 pypi_0 pypi
cycler 0.12.1 pypi_0 pypi
debugpy 1.8.2 pypi_0 pypi
decorator 5.1.1 pypi_0 pypi
defusedxml 0.7.1 pypi_0 pypi
executing 2.0.1 pypi_0 pypi
expat 2.6.2 h6a678d5_0
fasteners 0.19 pypi_0 pypi
fastjsonschema 2.20.0 pypi_0 pypi
fonttools 4.53.1 pypi_0 pypi
fqdn 1.5.1 pypi_0 pypi
h11 0.14.0 pypi_0 pypi
h5py 3.11.0 pypi_0 pypi
httpcore 1.0.5 pypi_0 pypi
httpx 0.27.0 pypi_0 pypi
idna 3.7 pypi_0 pypi
ipykernel 6.29.5 pypi_0 pypi
ipympl 0.9.4 pypi_0 pypi
ipython 8.26.0 pypi_0 pypi
ipython-genutils 0.2.0 pypi_0 pypi
ipywidgets 8.1.3 pypi_0 pypi
isoduration 20.11.0 pypi_0 pypi
isosplit6 0.1.4 pypi_0 pypi
jedi 0.19.1 pypi_0 pypi
jinja2 3.1.4 pypi_0 pypi
joblib 1.4.2 pypi_0 pypi
json5 0.9.25 pypi_0 pypi
jsonpointer 3.0.0 pypi_0 pypi
jsonschema 4.23.0 pypi_0 pypi
jsonschema-specifications 2023.12.1 pypi_0 pypi
jupyter-client 8.6.2 pypi_0 pypi
jupyter-core 5.7.2 pypi_0 pypi
jupyter-events 0.10.0 pypi_0 pypi
jupyter-lsp 2.2.5 pypi_0 pypi
jupyter-server 2.14.1 pypi_0 pypi
jupyter-server-terminals 0.5.3 pypi_0 pypi
jupyterlab 4.2.3 pypi_0 pypi
jupyterlab-pygments 0.3.0 pypi_0 pypi
jupyterlab-server 2.27.2 pypi_0 pypi
jupyterlab-widgets 3.0.11 pypi_0 pypi
kiwisolver 1.4.5 pypi_0 pypi
ld_impl_linux-64 2.38 h1181459_1
libffi 3.4.4 h6a678d5_1
libgcc-ng 11.2.0 h1234567_1
libgomp 11.2.0 h1234567_1
libstdcxx-ng 11.2.0 h1234567_1
libuuid 1.41.5 h5eee18b_0
markupsafe 2.1.5 pypi_0 pypi
mat73 0.63 pypi_0 pypi
matplotlib 3.9.1 pypi_0 pypi
matplotlib-inline 0.1.7 pypi_0 pypi
mistune 3.0.2 pypi_0 pypi
mountainsort5 0.5.6 pypi_0 pypi
nbclient 0.10.0 pypi_0 pypi
nbconvert 7.16.4 pypi_0 pypi
nbformat 5.10.4 pypi_0 pypi
ncurses 6.4 h6a678d5_0
neo 0.13.1 pypi_0 pypi
nest-asyncio 1.6.0 pypi_0 pypi
notebook 7.2.1 pypi_0 pypi
notebook-shim 0.2.4 pypi_0 pypi
numcodecs 0.12.1 pypi_0 pypi
numpy 1.26.4 pypi_0 pypi
openssl 3.0.14 h5eee18b_0
overrides 7.7.0 pypi_0 pypi
packaging 24.1 pypi_0 pypi
pandocfilters 1.5.1 pypi_0 pypi
parso 0.8.4 pypi_0 pypi
pexpect 4.9.0 pypi_0 pypi
pillow 10.4.0 pypi_0 pypi
pip 24.0 py312h06a4308_0
platformdirs 4.2.2 pypi_0 pypi
probeinterface 0.2.21 pypi_0 pypi
prometheus-client 0.20.0 pypi_0 pypi
prompt-toolkit 3.0.47 pypi_0 pypi
psutil 6.0.0 pypi_0 pypi
ptyprocess 0.7.0 pypi_0 pypi
pure-eval 0.2.2 pypi_0 pypi
pycparser 2.22 pypi_0 pypi
pygments 2.18.0 pypi_0 pypi
pyparsing 3.1.2 pypi_0 pypi
python 3.12.4 h5148396_1
python-dateutil 2.9.0.post0 pypi_0 pypi
python-json-logger 2.0.7 pypi_0 pypi
pyyaml 6.0.1 pypi_0 pypi
pyzmq 26.0.3 pypi_0 pypi
quantities 0.15.0 pypi_0 pypi
readline 8.2 h5eee18b_0
referencing 0.35.1 pypi_0 pypi
requests 2.32.3 pypi_0 pypi
rfc3339-validator 0.1.4 pypi_0 pypi
rfc3986-validator 0.1.1 pypi_0 pypi
rpds-py 0.19.0 pypi_0 pypi
scikit-learn 1.5.1 pypi_0 pypi
scipy 1.14.0 pypi_0 pypi
send2trash 1.8.3 pypi_0 pypi
setuptools 69.5.1 py312h06a4308_0
six 1.16.0 pypi_0 pypi
sniffio 1.3.1 pypi_0 pypi
soupsieve 2.5 pypi_0 pypi
spikeinterface 0.101.0rc0 pypi_0 pypi
sqlite 3.45.3 h5eee18b_0
stack-data 0.6.3 pypi_0 pypi
terminado 0.18.1 pypi_0 pypi
threadpoolctl 3.5.0 pypi_0 pypi
tinycss2 1.3.0 pypi_0 pypi
tk 8.6.14 h39e8969_0
tornado 6.4.1 pypi_0 pypi
tqdm 4.66.4 pypi_0 pypi
traitlets 5.14.3 pypi_0 pypi
types-python-dateutil 2.9.0.20240316 pypi_0 pypi
tzdata 2024a h04d1e81_0
uri-template 1.3.0 pypi_0 pypi
urllib3 2.2.2 pypi_0 pypi
wcwidth 0.2.13 pypi_0 pypi
webcolors 24.6.0 pypi_0 pypi
webencodings 0.5.1 pypi_0 pypi
websocket-client 1.8.0 pypi_0 pypi
wheel 0.43.0 py312h06a4308_0
widgetsnbextension 4.0.11 pypi_0 pypi
xz 5.4.6 h5eee18b_1
zarr 2.17.2 pypi_0 pypi
zlib 1.2.13 h5eee18b_1

[ianthomas23]

It looks like there is something fundamentally wrong with your environment as conda list gives different version of e.g. Matplotlib than pip list. I think you should delete this environment and start again.

[richbai90]

I was having the same issue. In my case it wasn't working in either vscode or jupyter directly. Turned out I didn't have ipympl installed in my environment.

A simple pip install ipympl fixed the issue for me. Posting it here in case somebody else finds it useful.