While using the software for this course, your computer’s keyboard language must be set to English. If needed, please follow these instructions to change your keyboard language.
Go to the download section for the Anaconda distribution of Python.
Click the green Download button.
If you receive an error message that says you are downloading from an unsafe or unknown site, you’ll need to change your security preferences, at least temporarily, by taking the steps outlined in the Lowering security settings section below.
Double-click on the downloaded file in your Downloads folder
(the name of the file should begin with Anaconda3 and
end with .pkg). This should start an automatic installer.
You should be able to use all of the default settings that the
installer gives you. Wait for the installer to finish and then
close it. You can now delete the installer by dragging the .pkg
file to the Trash.
Running Spyder, option 1:
Use the Spotlight tool to search for and run the Anaconda Navigator.
Within the Anaconda Navigator, find the section for Spyder and click the Launch button.
Running Spyder, option 2:
Run Terminal.
Enter the following from the command line:
spyder
Once you have installed Spyder, you must configure it by following the instructions found here.
Occasionally, we need one of our Python files to import code from another Python file. To ensure that Python is able to do this, you should take the following steps:
Navigate to System Preferences (using the Spotlight tool as needed).
Select Security and Privacy.
Select Files and Folders.
Find Spyder in your list of applications and give it access to
your Desktop, Downloads, and Documents folders.
OS X may stop you from downloading or running applications downloaded from the Web (as opposed to through the Mac App Store) unless you lower your security settings. Here’s how to adjust them so that you may install and run applications from anywhere:
Last updated on September 7, 2025.