How do I prevent Conda from activating the base environment by default

Question

I recently installed anaconda2 on my Mac  By default Conda is configured to activate the base environment when I open a fresh terminal session   I want access to the Conda commands  i e  I want the path to Conda added to my  PATH which Conda does when initialised so that s fine    But I don t ordinarily program in python  and I don t want Conda to activate an environment by default   When first executing conda init from the prompt  Conda adds the following to my  bash profile      gt  gt  gt  conda initialize  gt  gt  gt       Contents within this block are managed by  conda init       conda setup      Users geoff anaconda2 bin conda   shell bash   hook  2 gt   dev null   if      -eq 0    then     eval     conda setup  else if   -f   Users geoff anaconda2 etc profile d conda sh     then         Users geoff anaconda2 etc profile d conda sh  else     export PATH   Users geoff anaconda2 bin  PATH  fi   fi unset   conda setup    lt  lt  lt  conda initialize  lt  lt  lt    If I comment out the whole block  then I can t activate any Conda environments   I tried to comment out the whole block except for  export PATH   Users geoff anaconda2 bin  PATH    But then when I started a new session and tried to activate an environment  I got this error message   CommandNotFoundError  Your shell has not been properly configured to use  conda activate     This question  and others like it  are helpful  but doesn t ultimately answer my question and is more suited for linux users   For clarification  I m not asking to remove the  base  from my  PS1 I m asking for Conda not to activate base when I open a terminal session

User · Answer

I faced the same problem  Initially I deleted the  bash profile but this is not the right way  After installing anaconda it is showing the instructions clearly for this problem  Please check the image for solution provided by Anaconda

User · Answer

The answer depends a little bit on the version of conda that you have installed  For versions of conda    4 4  it should be enough to deactivate the conda environment after the initialization  so add  conda deactivate   right underneath     lt  lt  lt  conda initialize  lt  lt  lt

User · Answer

I have conda 4 6 with a similar block of code that was added by conda  In my case  there s a conda configuration setting to disable the automatic base activation   conda config --set auto activate base false   The first time you run it  it ll create a   condarc in your home directory with that setting to override the default   This wouldn t de-clutter your  bash profile but it s a cleaner solution without manual editing that section that conda manages

User · Answer

One thing that hasn t been pointed out  is that there is little to no difference between not having an active environment and and activating the base environment  if you just want to run applications from Conda s  Python s  scripts directory  as  DryLabRebel wants   You can install and uninstall via conda and conda shows the base environment as active - which essentially it is   gt  echo  Env CONDA DEFAULT ENV  gt  conda env list   conda environments    base                     F  scoop apps miniconda3 current   gt  conda activate  gt  echo  Env CONDA DEFAULT ENV base  gt  conda env list   conda environments    base                     F  scoop apps miniconda3 current

User · Answer

So in the end I found that if I commented out the Conda initialisation block like so      gt  gt  gt  conda initialize  gt  gt  gt       Contents within this block are managed by  conda init         conda setup      Users geoff anaconda2 bin conda   shell bash   hook  2 gt   dev null     if      -eq 0    then       eval     conda setup    else if   -f   Users geoff anaconda2 etc profile d conda sh     then         Users geoff anaconda2 etc profile d conda sh  else     export PATH   Users geoff anaconda2 bin  PATH  fi   fi   unset   conda setup    lt  lt  lt  conda initialize  lt  lt  lt    It works exactly how I want  That is  Conda is available to activate an environment if I want  but doesn t activate by default

User · Answer

There re 3 ways to achieve this after conda 4 6   The last method has the highest priority     Use sub-command conda config to change the setting   conda config --set auto activate base false  In fact  the former conda config sub-command is changing configuration file  condarc  We can modify  condarc directly  Add following content into  condarc under your home directory     auto activate base  bool      Automatically activate the base environment during shell     initialization  for  conda init  auto activate base  false  Set environment variable CONDA AUTO ACTIVATE BASE in the shell s init file    bashrc for bash   zshrc for zsh   CONDA AUTO ACTIVATE BASE false      To convert from the condarc file-based configuration parameter name to the environment variable parameter name  make the name all uppercase and prepend CONDA   For example  conda   s always yes configuration parameter can be specified using a CONDA ALWAYS YES environment variable    The environment settings take precedence over corresponding settings in  condarc file    References   The Conda Configuration Engine for Power Users Using the  condarc conda configuration file conda config --describe Conda 4 6 Release

User · Answer

To disable auto activation of conda base environment in terminal   conda config --set auto activate base false   To activate conda base environment   conda activate

User · Answer

If you want to keep your bashrc simple  you can remove all the conda init generated clutter  and keep only a single line       Users geoff anaconda2 etc profile d conda sh    See Recommended change to enable conda in your shell   This will make the conda command available without activating the base environment   If you want to use your bashrc on other systems where conda is not installed in the same path  you can keep the if fi lines as well to avoid error messages  i e    if   -f   Users geoff anaconda2 etc profile d conda sh     then         Users geoff anaconda2 etc profile d conda sh  fi

User · Answer

This might be a bug of the recent anaconda  What works for me   step1  vim  anaconda bin activate  it shows       bin sh                                                                                   CONDA ROOT   anaconda     Copyright  C  2012 Anaconda  Inc    SPDX-License-Identifier  BSD-3-Clause        CONDA ROOT etc profile d conda sh     return     conda activate        step2  comment out the last line    conda activate

[bash] How do I prevent Conda from activating the base environment by default?

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