matplotlib RuntimeError: Python is not installed as a framework

Question:

This question has been asked before, in here, also here. However, the solution didn’t fix the problem for my case.

The original error is, when I try to import matplotlib.pyplot, I got:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 1, in
File
"/Users/XX/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/pyplot.py",
line 114, in
_backend_mod, new_figure_manager, draw_if_interactive, _show = pylab_setup() File
"/Users/XX/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/init.py",
line 32, in pylab_setup
globals(),locals(),[backend_name],0) File "/Users/XX/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/backend_macosx.py",
line 24, in
from matplotlib.backends import _macosx RuntimeError: Python is not installed as a framework. The Mac OS X backend will not be able to
function correctly if Python is not installed as a framework. See the
Python documentation for more information on installing Python as a
framework on Mac OS X. Please either reinstall Python as a framework,
or try one of the other backends. If you are Working with Matplotlib
in a virtual enviroment see ‘Working with Matplotlib in Virtual
environments’ in the Matplotlib FAQ

I followed the solutions to add a ~/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc file with the code: backend: TkAgg. After doing that, my error changed to:

/Users/XX/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/font_manager.py:273:
UserWarning: Matplotlib is building the font cache using fc-list. This
may take a moment. warnings.warn(‘Matplotlib is building the font
cache using fc-list. This may take a moment.’) objc[25120]: Class
TKApplication is implemented in both
/Users/XX/anaconda/lib/libtk8.5.dylib and
/System/Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/Versions/8.5/Tk. One of the
two will be used. Which one is undefined. objc[25120]: Class TKMenu is
implemented in both /Users/XX/anaconda/lib/libtk8.5.dylib and
/System/Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/Versions/8.5/Tk. One of the
two will be used. Which one is undefined. objc[25120]: Class
TKContentView is implemented in both
/Users/XX/anaconda/lib/libtk8.5.dylib and
/System/Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/Versions/8.5/Tk. One of the
two will be used. Which one is undefined. objc[25120]: Class TKWindow
is implemented in both /Users/XX/anaconda/lib/libtk8.5.dylib and
/System/Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/Versions/8.5/Tk. One of the
two will be used. Which one is undefined.

I have no idea how to fix that. I’m not using a virtual machine.

PS: I found out that by adding:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use(‘TkAgg’)

before import matplotlib.pyplot, it seems to work. But adding those two lines of code every time is annoying…

What’s going on, and how I can fix it?

Asked By: KDD

||
Source

Answers:

I run my script in virtualenv. Python version is 3.5.

Add a line:

backend: TkAgg

in file:

~/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc

This solved the problem.

If you want to know more about why adding this solves the problem, you can read about customizing matplotlib’s backend. And TkAgg solves this issue because of it’s dependency with Tkinter.

Answered By: Joney

Below worked for me:

import matplotlib  
matplotlib.use('TkAgg')   
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

Reference:
https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/2375

Answered By: Sibish

I was also having the same error. What I have done is to install miniconda packages and using the pythonw. Python app was already installed in my mac. Installation is as simple as breaking an egg. Just bash the .sh file in the terminal.

Answered By: Abin Jo Abraham

I installed Jupyter Notebook in virtualenv and below worked for me:

At Console:

echo "backend: TkAgg" >> ~/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc
pip install matplotlib==2.1.0

On Notebook:

import matplotlib

Restart the kernel:

dataframe.plot.hist()
...

In my opinion, it will fix the error.

Answered By: hakan

I had the same issues in python 2.7 in virtualenv and I managed to fix those by simply downgrading matplotlib to version 2.1.0

Answered By: Massimiliano Caranzano

I was using pyenv so the matplotlibrc path wasn’t in the home directory, so I created this script to figure the path out and change the backend to Tkagg:

vim $(python -c "import os,matplotlib; print(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(matplotlib.__file__), 'mpl-data/matplotlibrc'));")

This script should work with any python on your system though.

Answered By: haruishi