Where to Find the Main Sections of the JupyterLab Documentation

Updated

The JupyterLab documentation site (jupyterlab.readthedocs.io) organizes its content into four top-level sections: Get Started, User Guide, Develop Extensions, and Contribute. You can reach any of them from the top-level links on the homepage or from the section list in the page body. Use Get Started if you are installing or opening JupyterLab for the first time, User Guide if you already have it running and want to learn a feature, Develop Extensions if you are writing an extension, and Contribute if you want to work on JupyterLab itself.

Get Started

This is the entry point for installation and first run. It covers installing JupyterLab and the initial setup steps. If you have never launched JupyterLab, start here before moving to the User Guide.

User Guide

The User Guide is the largest section and covers day-to-day use. Its topics include:

  • The JupyterLab Interface — the overall layout and how the pieces fit together
  • JupyterLab URLs — how the URL structure maps to the interface
  • Working with Files — file browsing and management
  • Text Editor — editing plain text files
  • Notebooks — creating and running notebooks
  • Code Consoles — interactive code execution outside a notebook
  • Completer — code completion
  • Terminals — running a terminal inside JupyterLab
  • Managing Kernels and Terminals — starting, stopping, and switching kernels
  • Commands and Commands in Markdown — the command system and how to invoke commands
  • Output and Files, Documents and Kernels, File and Output Formats — how documents, kernels, and outputs relate
  • Debugger — debugging support
  • Table Of Contents — navigating long documents
  • Extensions and Workspaces — managing extensions and saved layouts
  • JupyterLab on JupyterHub — running JupyterLab in a shared environment
  • Exporting Notebooks — exporting notebook content
  • Localization and language — interface language settings
  • Real Time Collaboration — collaborative editing
  • Language Server Protocol support — LSP-based features
  • Interface Customization, Applying Custom CSS, Settings Editor, Plugin Filtering — tailoring the interface and settings

If your question is "how do I do X in the interface," it is almost certainly answered somewhere in this section.

Develop Extensions

This section is for developers building on top of JupyterLab. It includes:

  • Common Extension Points — where extensions hook into the application
  • Reusing JupyterLab UI and Using JupyterLab components — building on existing UI pieces
  • Documents, Notebook, React User Interface Helpers — APIs for documents and UI
  • Internationalization and Localization — making extensions translatable
  • Identity, Design Patterns, CSS Patterns — conventions to follow
  • Extension Tutorial — a guided build
  • Targeting Multiple Applications — supporting more than one Jupyter application
  • Extension Migration Guide — moving an extension between versions
  • Other resources: Overview of Extensions, Plugins, Source Extensions, Prebuilt Extensions, Development workflow for source extensions, Testing your extension

Choose this section if you are writing or maintaining an extension rather than using JupyterLab.

Contribute

This section is for people contributing to JupyterLab itself, not just using or extending it. It covers:

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

How to Navigate

Two routes work for most lookups:

  1. Top-level links — the homepage lists the main sections at the top; use these when you know roughly which category your question falls into.
  2. In-page section list — the homepage body also lists the sections and their sub-topics, which is useful when you know the feature name but not which section owns it.

The documentation is for JupyterLab 4.7.0a2, so version-specific behavior may differ from older releases. JupyterLab is described as a highly extensible notebook authoring and editing environment within Project Jupyter, and it is positioned as a more advanced, feature-rich, customizable experience compared to Jupyter Notebook. If you want to try it without installing anything, the documentation points to Binder.