/collaborate

How to Collaborate

These are the steps you need to follow, to allow others to access your locally hosted jupyter notebook (or jupyter lab)

Do these once:

  1. Open a terminal and run jupyter notebook --generate-config

  2. This will print out in the terminal something like: Writing default config to: C:\Users\username\.jupyter\jupyter_notebook_config.py

  3. Locate and open with a text editor the file C:\Users\username\.jupyter\jupyter_notebook_config.py

  4. Within the file locate the comment: c.NotebookApp.allow_remote_access = False and change it to c.NotebookApp.allow_remote_access = True then save and close.

  5. run jupyter notebook password to create a password for jupyter (you will share this password with people you will collaborate!) I propose the team agrees to have a common password

  6. Run pip install jupyter_contrib_nbextensions to install jupyter extentions

  7. Create an account at ngrok

  8. Then download ngrok depending on you operating system

  9. Unzip the zip file

  10. Once extracted, run the executable (you might get a warning*, please proceed: show more -> run anyway)

  11. In the downlad page it will create a code snippet you should run in the executable it will be something like ngrok config add-authtoken 29EfheI8IknZXC9dTivgk6M4jVc_4zGtHaKadsvsdvfsvg2G

  12. Close everything (the terminal, and the executable)

*In case you are on Windows you might need to do the following for the ngrok executable to Bypass Microsoft Defender SmartScreen

  • Right-click on the file.
  • Select Properties.
  • Make sure you are in the General tab.
  • Press the Unblock button.
  • Click Apply/OK and exit. The file will be unblocked.

Every time you want to collaborate

  1. Start your jupyter notebook or jupyter lab (notice which port jupyter is running on, its usually on port 8888, localhost:8888 )
  2. Run the ngrok executable
  3. run ngrok http 8888 in the ngrok terminal
  4. It will print out something in the terminal, copy and share the url it prints (it will be something like https://5f74-2a02-85f-f0f5-2300-653e-4c82-42ed-782c.eu.ngrok.io

Once you close the ngrok executable, the person or people you shared the url will no longer have access to your jupyter notebook.