Installation | GPU Drivers | Documentation | Examples | Contributing

Next-gen plotting library built using the pygfx rendering engine that utilizes Vulkan, DX12, or Metal via WGPU, so it is very fast! fastplotlib is an expressive plotting library that enables rapid prototyping for large scale exploratory scientific visualization.

Note: fastplotlib is currently in the late alpha stage, but you're welcome to use it or contribute! See our Roadmap. Also, see this for a discussion on API stability: https://github.com/fastplotlib/fastplotlib/issues/121

What are some things I can do with fastplotlib?

• GPU-accelerated visualization

• interactive visualization via an intuitive and expressive API

• rapid prototyping and algorithm design

• easy exploration and fast rendering of large-scale data

• design, develop, evaluate, and ship machine learning models

• create visualizations for real-time acquisition systems for scientific instruments (cameras, etc.)

Supported frameworks

fastplotlib can run on anything that pygfx can also run, this includes:

✔️ Jupyter lab, using jupyter_rfb
✔️ PyQt and PySide
✔️ glfw
✔️ wxPython

Write your code once and run it anywhere. Whether you are using Qt, glfw, jupyter lab, or doing offscreen rendering, fastplotlib works across all major platforms (Linux, Windows, Mac OS X) 😄 See the FAQ for more details on where and how you can use fastplotlib.

Documentation

http://www.fastplotlib.org/ver/dev

Questions, issues, ideas? You are welcome to post an issue or post on the discussion forum! 😃

Installation

To install use pip:

With imgui support (recommended)

Without jupyterlab support, install desired GUI framework such as glfw, PyQt6, or PySide6 separately.

pip install -U "fastplotlib[imgui]"

With jupyterlab support.

pip install -U "fastplotlib[notebook,imgui]"

Without imgui

Minimal, install desired GUI library such as PyQt6, PySide6, or glfw separately.

pip install fastplotlib

With jupyterlab support only.

pip install -U "fastplotlib[notebook]"

Fastplotlib is also available on conda-forge. For imgui support you will need to separately install imgui-bundle, and for jupyterlab you will need to install jupyter-rfb and simplejpeg which are all available on conda-forge.

Note: fastplotlib and pygfx are fast evolving projects, the version available through pip might be outdated, you will need to follow the "For developers" instructions below if you want the latest features. You can find the release history here: https://github.com/fastplotlib/fastplotlib/releases

For developers

Make sure you have git-lfs installed.

git clone https://github.com/fastplotlib/fastplotlib.git
cd fastplotlib

# install all extras in place
pip install -e ".[notebook,docs,tests,imgui]"

# install latest pygfx
pip install git+https://github.com/pygfx/pygfx.git@main

See Contributing for more details on development

Examples

Examples gallery: http://fastplotlib.org/ver/dev/_gallery/index.html

User guide: http://fastplotlib.org/ver/dev/user_guide/guide.html

fastplotlib code is identical across notebook (jupyterlab), and desktop use with Qt/PySide or glfw.

Notebooks

The quickstart.ipynb tutorial notebook is a great way to get familiar with the API: https://github.com/fastplotlib/fastplotlib/tree/main/examples/notebooks/quickstart.ipynb

GPU drivers and requirements

Generally if your GPU is from 2017 or later it should be fine. Modern integrated graphics are usually fine for many use cases. The exact requirements will depend on how complex your visualization is and how many objects you need to render.

More detailed information on GPUs and drivers is here: http://fastplotlib.org/ver/dev/user_guide/gpu.html

For more detailed information, such as use on cloud computing infrastructure, see the WGPU docs: https://wgpu-py.readthedocs.io/en/stable/start.html#cloud-compute

Contributing ❤️

We welcome contributions! See the contributing guide: https://github.com/fastplotlib/fastplotlib/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md

You can also take a look at our Roadmap for 2026 and Issues for ideas on how to contribute!

Developers 🧠

• Kushal Kolar

• Caitlin Lewis

• Almar Klein

• Amol Pasarkar

A special thanks to all of the pygfx developers and the amazing work they have done.

Sponsors

Fastplotlib is free and open source. We would like to thank the following institutions for helping to support fastplotlib over the past few years.

• UNC Chapel Hill, Giovannucci Lab & Hantman Lab
• NYU & Flatiron Institute CCN, Williams lab & Chklovskii Lab
• Duke University, Pearson Lab
• Columbia University, Paninski lab

We are always open to new sponsors that can help further develop and improve the library.