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Installing Qiskit

Requirements

Qiskit is tested and supported on the following 64-bit systems:

  • Ubuntu 16.04 or later
  • macOS 10.12.6 or later
  • Windows 7 or later

Qiskit supports Python 3.5 or later.

We recommend installing Anaconda, a cross-platform Python distribution for scientific computing. Jupyter Notebook, included in Anaconda, is recommended for interacting with the Qiskit tutorials.

Using Qiskit on Windows requires VC++ runtime components. We recommend one of the following:

Install

We recommend using Python virtual environments to cleanly separate Qiskit from other applications and improve your experience.

The simplest way to use environments is by using the conda command, included with Anaconda. A Conda environment allows you to specify a specific version of Python and set of libraries. Run the following commands from a terminal window:

conda create -n name_of_my_env python=3

This will create a minimal environment with only Python installed in it. To put yourself inside this environment run:

source activate name_of_my_env

On Windows the command is:

activate name_of_my_env

The final step required is to install Qiskit with the following command:

pip install qiskit qiskit-aqua

There are optional dependencies that are required to use all the visualization functions available in Qiskit. You can install Qiskit along with these optional dependencies by running

pip install qiskit[visualization] qiskit-aqua

Install from Source

When installing the elements and components from source, by default their development version (which corresponds to the master git branch) will be used, as opposed to the stable version (which contains the same codebase as the published pip packages). Since the development versions of an element or component usually includes new features and changes, in general they require using the development version of the rest of the items as well.

In order to work with several components and elements simultaneously, it is recommended that the following steps are followed for each item:

  1. clone the repository.

  2. ensure that the stable version is not installed in the environment:

    pip uninstall name-of-the-package

  3. install the package in editable mode. From the root directory of the repository:

    pip install -e .

For more information see:

Access IBM Q Devices

IBM Q offers several real quantum computers and high-performance classical computing simulators through its quantum cloud services with Qiskit.

Create a free IBM Q account to get an API token.

After logging in, navigate to your account settings.

./images/figures/install_my_account.png

Navigate to the Advanced tab and click the Generate button in the API Token section.

./images/figures/install_api_token.png

Store your API token locally for later use in a configuration file called qiskitrc by running the following Python code:

from qiskit import IBMQ
IBMQ.save_account('MY_API_TOKEN')

where MY_API_TOKEN should be replaced with your token.

Note

IBM Q Network members must specify more than just an API token, as explained below.

If you are a member of the IBM Q Network, you must pass an additional argument to IBMQ.save_account(). The url argument can be found on your q-console account page, along with any other additional information required, e.g. proxy information. Pass your API token and the url argument by running the following Python code:

from qiskit import IBMQ
IBMQ.save_account('MY_API_TOKEN', url='https://...')

Refer to :ref:`advanced_use_of_ibm_q_devices_label` for more details, such as how to manage multiple IBM Q account credentials.