Installation

Install the package

Use a conda environment

To avoid dependency conflicts with other packages, it is best practice to install Python packages within a virtual environment. We recommend using conda or mamba to create and manage this environment, as they simplify the installation process. The following instructions assume that you have conda installed, but the same commands will also work with mamba/micromamba.

Users

To install movement in a new environment, follow one of the options below. We will use movement-env as the environment name, but you can choose any name you prefer.

Conda

To create an environment with the core package only:

conda create -n movement-env -c conda-forge movement

If you wish to use the GUI, which additionally requires napari, you should instead run:

conda create -n movement-env -c conda-forge movement napari pyqt

You may exchange pyqt for pyside2 if you prefer. See napari’s installation guide for more information on the backends.

To activate the environment:

conda activate movement-env

Pip

Create and activate an environment with some prerequisites:

conda create -n movement-env -c conda-forge python=3.12 pytables
conda activate movement-env

Install the core package from the latest release on PyPI:

pip install movement

If you wish to use the GUI, which additionally requires napari, you should instead run:

pip install movement[napari]   # works on most shells
pip install 'movement[napari]' # works on zsh (default shell on macOS)

Developers

If you are a developer looking to contribute to movement, please refer to our contributing guide for detailed setup instructions and guidelines.

Check the installation

To verify that the installation was successful, run (with movement-env activated):

movement info

You should see a printout including the version numbers of movement and some of its dependencies.

To test the GUI installation, you can run:

movement launch

This is equivalent to running napari -w movement and should open the napari window with the movement widget docked on the right-hand side.

Update the package

To update movement to the latest version, we recommend installing it in a new environment, as this prevents potential compatibility issues caused by changes in dependency versions.

To uninstall an existing environment named movement-env:

conda env remove -n movement-env

Tip

If you are unsure about the environment name, you can get a list of the environments on your system with:

conda env list

Once the environment has been removed, you can create a new one following the installation instructions above.