Installation Guide

Quick Installation

Familiar with Conda already? Do a quick install

You can install and start the activity-browser like this:

1. Install Miniconda.

2. conda create -n ab -c conda-forge activity-browser
   conda activate ab
   activity-browser

The Anaconda package manager

Skip this step if you already have a working installation of Anaconda or Miniconda, but make sure to keep your conda installation up-to-date: conda update -n base conda.

You need the python package manager Anaconda to install Activity Browser. Anaconda is somewhat like an app-store for python programs. You can install the full Anaconda user interface (navigator) or just the minimal command-line installer, Miniconda. If needed, see also the conda user guide or the Conda cheat sheet.

• Install the Anaconda manager of your choice from the above options.
• Start Anaconda Prompt from the start menu.
  • This is a terminal window with conda, you will need this prompt for all next steps.

Add the conda-forge channel

Open an Anaconda prompt window and type the following (and Enter):

conda config --prepend channels conda-forge

More information about this step

Activity Browser has many dependencies that are managed by conda-forge. By adding the channel you can install python packages from there.

The line above means:

• conda: a command for conda
• config: change something in the configuration (settings) of conda
• --prepend channels: in the channels from which conda can install things, add to the top (prepend)
• conda-forge: the channel name

Creating an environment and Installing Activity Browser

Next, we create a python environment, in which we install Activity Browser

conda create -n ab -c conda-forge activity-browser

Note

Installing Activity Browser can take some time, this depends on the speed of your internet connection and computer.

More information about this step

We create a separate environment, this allows Activity Browser to work with the specific versions of other libraries it needs without interfering with other python packages.

The line above means:

• conda: a command for conda
• create -n ab: create a new environment (-n) with the name ab
• -c conda-forge: from the channel (-c) conda-forge
• activity-browser: install the package activity-browser

You can have as many environments as you like, you can also install different versions of Activity Browser in different environments, for example for different plugins, or just for using different version of Activity Browser.

All environments will have access to the same projects and databases in Activity Browser.

Activating and running Activity Browser

To run Activity Browser, you need to activate your environment with

conda activate ab

And then run activity browser with.

activity-browser

Congratulations! You've started Activity Browser for the first time!

Every time you want to start Activity Browser, you need to start an anaconda prompt and do conda activate ab and then activity browser.

Updating Activity Browser

We recommend to regularly update Activity Browser to receive new features & bugfixes. These commands will update the Activity Browser and all of its dependencies in the conda environment called ab.

conda activate ab
conda update activity-browser

Important

If you currently have a version below 2.10.0, please consult this guide to update.