What Is the JupyterLab Documentation Website?

Updated

The JupyterLab Documentation site (jupyterlab.readthedocs.io) is the official documentation for JupyterLab, a highly extensible, feature-rich notebook authoring application and editing environment. It is part of Project Jupyter, an umbrella project that provides tools and standards for interactive computing with computational notebooks. The site is the reference point for anyone who wants to install JupyterLab, learn its interface, extend it with plugins, or contribute to its development.

What JupyterLab itself is

According to the documentation, a computational notebook is a shareable document that combines:

  • computer code
  • plain language descriptions
  • data
  • rich visualizations such as 3D models, charts, graphs, and figures
  • interactive controls

A notebook plus an editor like JupyterLab gives you a fast interactive environment for prototyping and explaining code, exploring and visualizing data, and sharing ideas with others. JupyterLab is described as a sibling to other notebook authoring applications under Project Jupyter, such as Jupyter Notebook and Jupyter Desktop, and it offers a more advanced, feature-rich, customizable experience compared to Jupyter Notebook.

What the documentation site covers

The documentation is organized around three broad directions: using JupyterLab, extending it, and contributing to it.

Using JupyterLab

The User Guide section includes:

  • Get Started
  • The JupyterLab Interface
  • JupyterLab URLs
  • Working with Files
  • Text Editor
  • Notebooks
  • Code Consoles
  • Completer
  • Terminals
  • Managing Kernels and Terminals
  • Commands and Commands in Markdown
  • Output and Files
  • Documents and Kernels
  • File and Output Formats
  • Debugger
  • Table Of Contents
  • Extensions
  • Workspaces
  • JupyterLab on JupyterHub
  • Exporting Notebooks
  • Localization and language
  • Real Time Collaboration
  • Language Server Protocol support
  • Interface Customization, Applying Custom CSS, Settings Editor, and Plugin Filtering

There is also an Advanced Usage section covering JupyterLab on Binder.

Extending JupyterLab

The Develop Extensions area covers:

  • Common Extension Points
  • Reusing JupyterLab UI
  • Using JupyterLab components
  • Documents, Notebook, React User Interface Helpers
  • Internationalization and Localization
  • Identity, Design Patterns, and CSS Patterns
  • Extension Tutorial
  • Targeting Multiple Applications
  • Extension Migration Guide

Additional extension resources include an Overview of Extensions, Plugins, Source Extensions, Prebuilt Extensions, a development workflow for source extensions, and testing your extension.

Contributing

The Contribute section covers:

  • General Guidelines for Contributing
  • Languages, Tools and Processes
  • Submitting a Pull Request
  • Contributing from within the browser
  • Setting up a local development environment
  • Installing JupyterLab
  • Internationalization

When to use this site

Use the JupyterLab Documentation when you need to:

  • confirm what JupyterLab is and how it relates to Jupyter Notebook and Jupyter Desktop
  • look up installation and setup instructions
  • understand the interface, files, notebooks, kernels, terminals, or the debugger
  • customize the interface, settings, or CSS
  • build or migrate an extension
  • find contribution guidelines and local development setup

The documentation also notes that JupyterLab follows the Jupyter Community Guides, and it points to Binder if you want to try JupyterLab without a local install.