Basic First Aid

These suggestions, while more of a shotgun approach, tend to fix the majority of reported issues just on their own.

Reinstalling Spyder

If none of the previous steps solve your issue, you should do a full uninstall of Spyder by whatever means you originally installed it.

For Anaconda, follow all the steps under Option B in the Anaconda uninstall guide, delete the Anaconda directory wherever it was originally installed, and (on Windows) remove the %appdata%/python directory if it exists.

Deleting appdata/python directory

Then, do a clean install of the latest version of the Anaconda distribution which is how we recommend you install Spyder and keep it up to date.

Important

While you are welcome to get Spyder working on your own by one of the many other means we offer, we are only able to provide individual support for install-related issues for users of the Anaconda distribution. In particular, pip installation, while doable, is only really for experts, as there are many pitfalls involved and different issues specific to your setup, which is why we recommend using Conda whenever possible. For further information, please visit our Installation Guide.

Isolating problems

If you get an error while running a specific line, block, or script/program, it may not be an issue with Spyder, but rather something lower down in the packages it depends on. Try running it in the following in order if and until it starts working as you expect. If you manage to isolate the bug, report it to the last one it doesn’t work in.

  1. Spyder itself, of course! Make sure you can reproduce the error after closing and reopening it, if possible.

  2. A bare QtConsole instance, e.g. launched from Anaconda navigator or from the Anaconda Prompt/Terminal/command line (Windows/Mac/Linux) with jupyter qtconsole.

    Anaconda navigator showing qtconsole

    QtConsole is the GUI console backend Spyder depends on to run its code, so most issues involving Spyder’s IPython Console are actually something with QtConsole instead, and can be reported to their issue tracker.

  3. An IPython command line shell, launched with e.g. ipython from the Anaconda Prompt/Terminal/command line (Windows/Mac/Linux). Reproducible bugs can be reported to their Github page, though make sure to read their guidelines and docs first.

  4. A standard Python interpreter, either run as a script file with python path/to/your/file.py or launched interactively with python from your Anaconda Prompt/Terminal/command line (Windows/Mac/Linux). While it is not impossible that you’ve found Python bug, it is much more likely to be an issue with the code itself or a package you are using, so your best sources are the Python docs and the other resources listed above.

Tip

If the problem reoccurs in a similar or identical way with any of these methods (other than only Spyder itself), then it is almost certainly not an issue with Spyder, and would be best handled elsewhere. As we usually aren’t able to do much about issues not related to Spyder, a forum like Stack Overflow or the relevant package’s docs is a much better place to get help or report the issue.

See the Calling for Help section for other places to look for information and assistance.

Debugging and patching

If you know your way around Python, you can often diagnose and even fix Spyder issues yourself, since the IDE is written in the same language you use in it. You can explore the error messages you’re receiving and Spyder’s inner workings with the Internal Console, available under the menu item View ‣ Panes ‣ Internal Console.

Spyder showing Internal console

For more detailed debug output, start Spyder from the command line (Anaconda Prompt on Windows) with spyder --debug-info verbose.

Even if you don’t manage to fix the problem yourself, this output can be very helpful in aiding us to quickly narrow down and solve your issue for you.