How to get interactive plot of pyplot when using pycharm

15
votes

I am using PyCharm as the IDE for python, and when you make a plot (with the same code like pyplot.plot(...), pyplot.show()) pycharm displays it within its IDE. However, this looks like a static image. When you zoom in, the plot starts to blur.

In other IDE, pyplot creates an interactive plot. When you zoom in, it basically re-plots the curve. And you can also drag the plot. Is there anyway in PyCharm I can have the interactive plot from pyplot?

enter image description here enter image description here

1
pythonmatplotlibpycharm
No. When you save the plot it becomes an image. - Primusa
Disable Settings | Tools | Python Scientific | Show plots in tool window. It should do the trick. - Pavel Karateev
As Pavel described here (intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/…) you may also need to change your backend e. g. using matplotlib.use('Qt5Agg') or matplotlib.use('TkAgg') - MichaelA

1 Answers

10
votes

Just need to change your plotting backend.

If you're on macOS: 

import matplotlib as mpl
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
mpl.use('macosx')

plt.plot(range(10))

should produce a new window that looks like this: enter image description here

Or if you prefer a different backend or are on Windows (as @MichaelA said)

import matplotlib as mpl
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
mpl.use('Qt5Agg')  # or can use 'TkAgg', whatever you have/prefer

plt.plot(range(10))