First steps with Spyder - Part 3: Customization

Hello everyone, I’m Juanita! In this video, I will show you how to customize Spyder to match your workflow and development style.

First, we are going to learn how to change the font in the Editor, IPython Console and Help panes. To do this, go to Preferences, select the Appearance entry and scroll down to Fonts. You can change both the style and the size of the font for both plain and rich text. You can see how this affects the font in the Editor, Console and Help panes.

In this same dialog, you can easily change the syntax highlighting theme, for which you can see the preview at the right of the window. Note that Spyder’s interface theme changes to match the highlighting theme because the Interface theme option is set to Automatic by default. However, you can change the theme for the entire Spyder interface, choosing between Light and Dark. After selecting this change, click Apply to restart Spyder to apply the new theme.

Beyond just Spyder’s preferences, you can freely rearrange the panes in Spyder’s main window. To show or hide panes, go to Panes under the View menu, and select which ones you want to see. For example, let’s hide the Files pane and show the Profiler pane. You can also close a pane from its options menu, which will hide it from the main window.

By default, the panes and toolbars are locked so they can’t be moved accidentally. However, unchecking the option Lock panes and toolbars in the View menu will allow you to move them freely anywhere on the window, by dragging them from the top and dropping them at any position you like. You can also undock a pane, which will open a new window with it. You can have as many separate windows as you have panes, if you choose. This feature is very useful if you work with several monitors because you can undock the Editor and move it to a different monitor, while working with the rest of the panes in your main monitor.

Additionally, you can split the Editor pane vertically or horizontally in as many copies as you want, and open one or more panels in separate Spyder windows, complete with their own toolbar, outline and status bar.

Finally, each pane can be customized further under its respective options menu and Preferences panel.

With all these options, you can customize Spyder to your heart’s content. However, if you ever want to return to its default configuration, you can always reset the window layout under Window Layouts in the View menu, or your entire Spyder configuration with the Reset to Default button in the Preferences.

Enjoy your customized version of Spyder, and Happy Spydering!