Notebooks

Notebooks

⚠ Microsoft has ended Polyglot Notebooks and will archive .NET Interactive. MatPlotLibNet.Notebooks builds on .NET Interactive. Existing setups keep working, but the package stands still at the version it reached and nothing builds or publishes it any more. For new notebook work see Verso.

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Recommended replacement — MatPlotLibNet.Verso

MatPlotLibNet.Verso draws the same charts in a Verso notebook, the open-source notebook built to replace Polyglot. Install the extension from Verso's Extensions panel and a cell that ends on a figure shows the chart. See Verso for the whole page.

If what you want is a chart outside a notebook, MatPlotLibNet.Interactive opens a live browser window from any .NET context: a console app, a script, a test or a background service. It needs no notebook runtime, no kernel and no web server.

dotnet add package MatPlotLibNet.Interactive

using MatPlotLibNet;
using MatPlotLibNet.Interactive;

double[] x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
double[] y = [2, 4, 3, 5, 1];

// Opens a browser window — equivalent to a notebook cell output
var handle = await Plt.Create()
    .WithTitle("My Chart")
    .Plot(x, y)
    .Build()
    .ShowAsync();

// Recalculate and push a new frame — like re-running a cell
y = Recalculate();
await handle.UpdateAsync(Plt.Create().Plot(x, y).Build());

Which one to reach for:

	Polyglot Notebooks	Verso	MatPlotLibNet.Interactive
Runtime dependency	.NET Interactive (EOL)	Verso	None
Charts inline in a cell	Yes	Yes	No
Works in console / scripts	No	No	Yes
Works in unit tests	No	No	Yes
Live push updates	No	No	Yes (SignalR)
Still developed	No	Yes	Yes

See the Package Map for full details.

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Existing Polyglot Notebooks setup

Existing Polyglot Notebooks setups keep working as before:

#r "nuget: MatPlotLibNet.Notebooks"

using MatPlotLibNet;

// Return a Figure — displayed inline automatically
Plt.Create().WithTitle("My Chart").Plot(x, y).Build()

// Explicit display — multiple charts in one cell
Plt.Create().Plot(x, y1).WithTitle("A").Build().Display();
Plt.Create().Plot(x, y2).WithTitle("B").Build().Display();

How it works

The package places its DLL in interactive-extensions/dotnet so Polyglot Notebooks auto-discovers it as a kernel extension. On load it registers a Formatter<Figure> with MIME type text/html:

Figure → figure.ToSvg() → <div style="overflow:auto;max-width:100%;">{svg}</div>

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Other alternatives

VS Code Jupyter extension + standard .NET kernel

This is Microsoft's own migration guidance: use the VS Code Jupyter extension with an alternative Jupyter kernel. Save the SVG to a file and reference it from a Markdown cell:

Plt.Create().Plot(x, y).Save("chart.svg");
// In a Markdown cell: ![chart](chart.svg)

Export SVG / PNG and open in browser

This is the simplest fallback for scripts. It has no runtime dependency at all:

Plt.Create().Plot(x, y).Save("chart.svg");  // open in any browser
Plt.Create().Plot(x, y).Save("chart.png");  // needs MatPlotLibNet.Skia

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Package details

Target framework	net8.0
Key dependency	Microsoft.DotNet.Interactive (private, not transitive)
Status	Frozen at the version it reached. Nothing builds it and nothing publishes it; the upstream runtime is EOL
Replacement	MatPlotLibNet.Verso for a notebook, MatPlotLibNet.Interactive outside one