Configuring Anaconda environment on macOS Catalina

Setting up Data Science environment using Anaconda on latest macOS Catalina 10.15.x

Photo by Sai Kiran Anagani on Unsplash

When we upgrade to latest macOS Catalina 10.15.x, we need to take care of few configuration steps to ensure Anaconda environment works fine. If we are using Anaconda distribution on our existing macOS for machine learning purposes leveraging Spyder, Jupyter notebook, Rstudio etc. along with multiple environments for using tensorflow, keras etc. then it may require some changes.

Here are the steps:

1. The assumption is that some of these versions are installed and configured on macOS version prior to that of Catalina — Python 3.7.x, conda 4.7x etc.
2. After upgrading to macOS Catalina, the Python Anaconda environment moves certain files from root directory to “Relocated Items” folder and the Anaconda navigator app does not work AS-IS.
3. Go to the Anaconda site here to download “Anaconda 2019.10” for macOS installer (preferably choose version 3.7 and 64 bit command line installer)
4. The downloaded file should be found in ```/Users/<username>/Downloads``` directory.
5. Go to terminal app and provide execute access by using the command: chmod +x <name of Anaconda command line…