Is %matplot inline obsolete?

Question

Based on my understanding from this question %matplotlib inline is used so figures can be shown in Jupyter. But figures are shown in Jupyter without using %matplotlib inline perfectly fine. for example the following code:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.plot(np.random.randn(50).cumsum())
plt.show()

So is %matplotlib inline obsolete or am I misunderstanding it's purpose?

Answer 1

The default matplotlib backend in a jupyter notebook is inline. You can inspect this by using print(plt.get_backend()) after loading matplotlib. For example:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
print(plt.get_backend())

returns module://ipykernel.pylab.backend_inline

The magic %matplotlib can be used to switch back to inline if you had switched to some other backend. The following cells can illustrate this when run in a notebook.

In [100]:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.plot(np.random.randn(50).cumsum())

In [101]:

%matplotlib notebook
plt.plot(np.random.randn(50).cumsum())

In [103]:

%matplotlib inline
plt.plot(np.random.randn(50).cumsum())