Skip to main content
  • You might need to purchase a license to stay compliant with our Terms of Service.
  • If your company security policies do not allow admin privileges for end users, you will be unable to install Miniconda manually. Consider requesting that your IT admin add Miniconda to a software delivery or fleet management system (such as Kanji, Jamf, etc.).
This page contains basic Miniconda installation instructions for Windows, macOS, and Linux, as well as a command-line quickstart installation guide.
On Windows, macOS, and Linux, it is best to install Miniconda for the local user, which does not require administrator permissions and is the most robust type of installation. However, if you need to, you can install Miniconda system wide, which does require administrator permissions.

​
Basic install instructions

  1. Download the installer from the Anaconda website or by using your preferred command line interface:
    Navigate to anaconda.com/download, register with Anaconda, and click Download for Windows under Miniconda Installers.
  2. (Recommended) Verify the integrity of your installer to ensure that it was not corrupted or tampered with during download.
    To ensure that your downloaded installer has not been tampered with or corrupted, generate its SHA-256 hash value and compare that hash to the official hash provided in the archive.
    1. Open PowerShell and run the following command: 
      Get-FileHash <PATH_TO_INSTALLER_FILE> -Algorithm SHA256
      Replace <PATH_TO_INSTALLER_FILE> with the file path to the downloaded installer file.
    2. Note the generated SHA-256 hash value from the output.
    3. Visit repo.anaconda.com/miniconda to find the official SHA-256 hash for your installer.
    4. Compare the hash values. If they match, the installer is safe to use.
    For more information, see cryptographic hash verification in the official conda documentation.
  3. Go to your Downloads folder (or Home folder if downloaded via CLI) and double-click the installer to launch.
    To prevent permission errors, do not launch the installer from the Favorites folder.
    If you encounter issues during installation, temporarily disable your anti-virus software during install, then re-enable it after the installation concludes. If you installed for All Users, uninstall Miniconda and re-install it for Just Me only.
  4. Read through Miniconda’s End User License Agreement (EULA) and click I Agree to agree to the terms. You can view Anaconda’s Terms of Service (TOS) at https://www.anaconda.com/legal.
  5. Select an installation option:
    • Just Me (Recommended) - Install Miniconda for the current user account.
    • All Users - Install Miniconda for all user accounts on the computer (requires Windows Administrator privileges).
  6. Click Next.
  7. Select a destination folder to install Miniconda, then click Next.
    • Anaconda recommends installing Miniconda in a directory with no spaces or special characters to avoid potential compatibility issues with open-source tools. For more information, see the FAQ.
    • Do not install as Administrator unless admin privileges are required.
  8. Customize your installation options:
    • Create shortcuts - Selected by default. Creates Start Menu shortcuts for the Anaconda Prompt packages. Deselecting this option skips creating these shortcuts.
    • Add Miniconda3 to my PATH environment variable - Adds the path that contains the conda binaries to your PATH environment variable.
    Anaconda does not recommend selecting this option. The conda binaries path contains other package binaries, which are permanently added to your PATH environment variable, even if no conda environment is currently active. This makes it possible for other software to use these package files, which might lead to errors.
    Unless you plan on installing and running multiple versions of Miniconda or Python, open Anaconda Prompt from the Start Menu to begin your environment management work.
    • Register Miniconda3 as my default Python 3.13 - Selected by default. Registers the Python package in this install as the default Python for programs like VSCode, PyCharm, and so on.
    • Clear the package cache upon completion - Runs conda clean --all --force-pkgs-dirs after the install finishes. For more information on these commands, see the conda command documentation.
  9. Click Install. The installation might take a few minutes to complete. Click Show details to view the packages being installed.
  10. Click Next twice, then click Finish to close the installer.
  11. Open Anaconda Prompt to use Miniconda.
For information on installing in silent mode, see the Quick command line install commands for examples or the Installing in silent mode section of Installing on Windows in the conda project documentation.
As of August 15, 2025, Anaconda has stopped building packages for Intel Mac computers (osx-64). Existing Intel (MacOSX-x86_64) installers are still available at https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/ and the last Miniconda installer release for Intel Mac computers will be 25.7.x. For more information, see our blog on the end of Intel mac support.
The graphical installer for macOS installs Miniconda into /opt/miniconda3 in your file system. If you want to install Miniconda into your Home directory or if you have multiple users on a system and want to manage your installation more carefully, Anaconda recommends the shell (or command line) installer.
  1. Navigate to anaconda.com/download, register with Anaconda, and click Download for Mac under Miniconda Installers.
  2. (Optional) Anaconda recommends verifying the integrity of the installer after downloading it.
    To ensure that your downloaded installer has not been tampered with or corrupted, generate its SHA-256 hash value and compare that hash to the official hash provided in the archive.
    1. Open Terminal and run the following command: 
      shasum -a 256 <PATH_TO_INSTALLER_FILE>
      Replace <PATH_TO_INSTALLER_FILE> with the file path to the downloaded installer file.
    2. Note the generated SHA-256 hash value from the output.
    3. Visit repo.anaconda.com/miniconda to find the official SHA-256 hash for your installer.
    4. Compare the hash values. If they match, the installer is safe to use.
    For more information, see cryptographic hash verification in the official conda documentation.
  3. Double-click the .pkg file.
  4. View the Read Me instructions and click Continue.
  5. Read through Miniconda’s End User License Agreement (EULA) and click Continue, then click Agree to agree to the terms. You can view Anaconda’s Terms of Service (TOS) at https://www.anaconda.com/legal.
  6. Choose an install location:
    • Install for all users of this computer (Recommended) - Installs Miniconda into /opt/miniconda3 for all users of the computer.
    • Install on a specific disk - Enables you to choose a different location to install Miniconda.
  7. Click Install. When the installation finishes, open your terminal application.
    You should see (base) in the command line prompt. This tells you that you’re in your base conda environment. To learn more about environments, see Environments.
  8. Test your installation by running conda list. If conda has been installed correctly, a list of installed packages appears.
Verify your installation of Miniconda by using the CLI:
  1. Access the CLI for your operating system:
    1. Search for “Anaconda Prompt” in the taskbar search.
    2. Select Anaconda Prompt.
    You should see (base) in the command line prompt. This tells you that you’re in your base conda environment. To learn more about environments, see Environments.
  2. Run any conda command. For example:
    • conda list - Displays a list of packages installed in your active environment and their versions.
    • conda --version - Displays conda’s version number.

​
Manual shell initialization

If you have completed your install, but are not able to use conda in your command line interface, your shell might not be initialized. You can initialize your shell manually after installation by running the following command: 
source <PATH_TO_CONDA>/bin/activate
conda init --all
Replace <PATH_TO_CONDA> with the path to your conda install.
If you want to specify the shell to initialize (macOS 10.15 and later uses zsh as the default shell, for example), see conda init in the official conda documentation for a list of supported shells.
Using conda init modifies some of your shell configuration files, such as .bash_profile or .zshrc. To test which files conda init is going to modify on your system, run the command with the --dry-run flag.
conda init --all --dry-run
Including --dry-run prevents conda from making any actual file updates.

​
Quickstart install instructions

These command line instructions will get you set up quickly with the latest Miniconda installer. Follow the steps for your system to download and install Miniconda, then follow the steps in Verify your install above to verify your Miniconda installation.
These quick install commands run a silent install. If you run a silent install, you are accepting Anaconda’s Terms of Service (TOS) by default. Please make sure to review Anaconda’s full TOS here before proceeding with silent installations.
These three commands quickly and quietly download the latest 64-bit Windows installer, rename it to a shorter file name, perform a silent install, and then delete the installer:
curl https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Windows-x86_64.exe -o .\miniconda.exe
start /wait "" .\miniconda.exe /S
del .\miniconda.exe
You can find older versions of the Windows installer at <https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda>.For example, to download an older version of Miniconda for Python 3.12 for a 64-bit Windows computer, replace the curl command for the latest installer with the following curl command instead:
curl https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-py312_24.5.0-0-Windows-x86_64.exe -o .\miniconda.exe
After installing, open Anaconda Prompt to use Miniconda.

​
Troubleshooting

For more troubleshooting, see Troubleshooting Miniconda. For resources like community support and bug reports, see Help and support.

​
command not found: conda

Cause
The command not found: conda error occurs when your command line interface (CLI) can’t find the conda command in order to use it. This might be because:
  • You don’t have conda properly initialized.
  • You have set auto_activate_base to false.
  • You’re using a shell that conda doesn’t support.
  • Conda is not installed or the install was incomplete or corrupted.
These issues primarily occur on macOS/Linux computers. Anaconda Distribution and Miniconda installations on Windows include Anaconda Prompt, which opens with conda initialized by default.
Solution
If you recently installed Anaconda Distribution or Miniconda, make sure you closed and reopened your CLI to make conda’s initialization take effect.
If you don’t want to close your CLI, you can also use one of the following source commands to refresh your shell:
source ~/.bashrc
Use the command that matches your shell.
You can also initialize conda directly from its bin directory:
<PATH_TO_CONDA>/bin/conda init
Replace <PATH_TO_CONDA> with a path to your conda installation.
To see the value for auto_activate_base, run the following command:
conda config --describe auto_activate_base
If your terminal returns false, this means that conda is not automatically activating your base environment when you start a new shell. This behavior emulates your system Python, and some users prefer to have their conda environment be inactive until they need it. However, this is not conda’s default behavior after installation.To change the value of auto_activate_base to true, run the following command:
conda config --set auto_activate_base true
If you have auto_activate_base set as false, the conda command will still be available as a shell function, but your base environment will not be active when a new shell is started. To activate your base environment, run conda activate.
For information on which shells conda supports, see Conda activate in the official conda documentation.
If you have tried to initialize conda in your shell but it didn’t work, try uninstalling and reinstalling Anaconda Distribution or Miniconda.
Make sure that you say yes to the initialization option, and, if installing from the CLI, reinitialize your shell by restarting it or using its source command. For more information, see Initialize conda in your shell.

​
Recovering your Anaconda installation

Cause
If your Anaconda installation has become corrupted and is in a state where normal conda commands are not functioning, use the following steps to repair Anaconda and preserve your installed packages and environments.
Solution
  1. Download a new installer, then follow the instructions for your operating system.
    Use the actual path, filename, and directory name for your installation.
    1. Open a terminal application, such as Command Prompt.
    2. Change your original installer’s name so you do not overwrite it: 
      move anaconda3 anaconda_old
    3. Run the Anaconda.exe installer as usual and use robocopy to sync the directories: 
      robocopy anaconda_old anaconda3 /S
    4. Delete your old Anaconda installation directory: 
      rd /s anaconda_old
  2. Run conda list to view the packages from the previous installation.
  3. Run conda info --envs to list the environments created in the previous installation, which are now available in the new installation.

​
”This package is incompatible with this version of macOS” error when running a .pkg installer on OSX

Cause
When running the .pkg installer, you may encounter this error during the “Installation” step:

This error occurs when the installation attempts to write to a directory for which it does not have write permissions.
Solution
Manually select an appropriate install location. The following example shows how to select your user’s home directory.
  1. Re-run the installer and click through until you reach either the Installation Type or Destination Select page.
  2. If you reach the Installation Type page first, click Change Install Location…. This will take you to the Destination Select page.
  3. Click Install on a specific disk….
  4. Select the appropriate destination drive. Then click Choose Folder….
  5. Select your user’s home directory (for example, /Users/john.doe/). Then click Choose.
  6. In the message box, confirm the name of the install folder you chose in the previous step. Then click Continue.
  7. Click Install, and then proceed with the rest of the installation.
If you continue to receive the same error message, please open an issue here, and be sure to include the installation log output from your install.log file, which can be found at /var/log/install.log.

​
”The installation failed” message when running a .pkg installer on OSX

Cause
When running the .pkg installer, you may see this message at the end of the installation:
If so, check for the following:
  1. Open your /var/log/install.log file and check whether the most recent lines show errors following a call to conda init --all. 
    open /var/log/install.log
  2. In your $HOME directory, check whether the owner of your shell config files is root: 
    ls -la ~/.bash_profile ~/.config/fish/config.fish ~/.tcshrc ~/.xonshrc ~/.zshrc
Solution
If both of the above are true, do the following:
  1. Change the owner of your shell config files to your current user: 
    sudo chown -R $USER ~/.bash_profile ~/.config/fish/config.fish ~/.tcshrc ~/.xonshrc ~/.zshrc
  2. Uninstall the previous installation. Then re-run the installer, making sure to select the Install for me only option.