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Solving the 'Conda Not Found' Issue After Upgrading to macOS Catalina

When you upgrade your macOS to Catalina, you might encounter a common issue: your Conda environment seems to disappear. This post will guide you through the process of resolving the ‘Conda not found’ issue, ensuring your data science workflow remains uninterrupted.
By Saturn Cloud | | Miscellaneous

Solving the ‘Conda Not Found’ Issue After Upgrading to macOS Catalina

When you upgrade your macOS to Catalina, you might encounter a common issue: your Conda environment seems to disappear. This post will guide you through the process of resolving the ‘Conda not found’ issue, ensuring your data science workflow remains uninterrupted.

Introduction

macOS Catalina brought a lot of new features to the table, but it also introduced a few challenges for data scientists. One of these is the ‘Conda not found’ issue, which can disrupt your workflow and slow down your productivity. This blog post will guide you through the process of resolving this issue, ensuring you can continue your data science projects without any hiccups.

Understanding the Issue

Before we dive into the solution, let’s understand the problem. When you upgrade to macOS Catalina, the default shell changes from bash to zsh. This change can cause issues with your Conda environment, leading to the ‘Conda not found’ error.

Step 1: Check Your Shell

First, confirm that your default shell has indeed changed to zsh. Open Terminal and type:

echo $SHELL

If the output is ‘/bin/zsh’, then your default shell is zsh.

Step 2: Locate Your Conda

Next, you need to find where Conda is installed. Type:

which conda

If you get no output, it means your system can’t find Conda. But don’t worry, it’s still there. We just need to point your system in the right direction.

Step 3: Add Conda to Your Path

To add Conda to your path, you need to edit your shell profile. If you’re using zsh, this will be your ‘.zshrc’ file. Type:

nano ~/.zshrc

This will open your ‘.zshrc’ file in a text editor. Add the following line at the end of the file:

export PATH="/Users/yourusername/anaconda3/bin:$PATH"

Replace ‘yourusername’ with your actual username. This line tells your system where to find Conda.

Step 4: Source Your Profile

After saving and closing the ‘.zshrc’ file, you need to source it so that the changes take effect. Type:

source ~/.zshrc

Step 5: Verify the Solution

Finally, verify that the issue has been resolved by typing:

which conda

You should now see the path to your Conda installation. If you type:

conda list

You should see a list of all the packages in your Conda environment.

Conclusion

Upgrading to macOS Catalina can cause a few hiccups in your data science workflow, but they’re easily resolved. By following these steps, you can fix the ‘Conda not found’ issue and get back to your projects. Remember, the key is to ensure that your system knows where to find Conda. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to use Conda just like you did before the upgrade.

Keywords

  • macOS Catalina
  • Conda not found
  • Data science
  • Conda environment
  • Shell
  • zsh
  • bash
  • Path
  • Anaconda
  • Terminal

Meta Description

Learn how to resolve the ‘Conda not found’ issue after upgrading to macOS Catalina. This guide will help you get your Conda environment back up and running in no time.

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