Livebook

Livebook is a web application for writing interactive and collaborative code notebooks. It features:

• Code notebooks with Markdown support and Code cells where Elixir code is evaluated on demand.

• Rich code editor through CodeMirror: with support for autocompletion, inline documentation, code formatting, etc.

• Interactive results via Kino: display Vega-Lite charts, tables, maps, and more.

• Automation: use Smart cells to perform high-level tasks and write notebooks faster than ever. Query databases, plot charts, build maps, and more directly from Livebook's UI.

• Reproducible: Livebook ensures your code runs in a predictable order, all the way down to package management. It also tracks your notebook state, annotating which parts are stale.

• Collaboration: multiple users can work on the same notebook at once, no additional setup required.

• Decentralized: Livebook is open-source and you can run it anywhere. The "Run in Livebook" badge makes it easy to import any Livebook into your own Livebook.

• Versionable: notebooks are stored in the .livemd format, which is a subset of Markdown with support for diagrams via Mermaid and for mathematical formulas via KaTex. .livemd files can be shared and play well with version control.

• Custom runtimes: when executing Elixir code, you can either start a fresh Elixir instance, connect to an existing node, or run it inside an existing Elixir project, with access to all of its modules and dependencies. This means Livebook can be a great tool to introspect and document existing projects too.

Getting started

Head out to the Install section of Livebook's website to get started. Once Livebook is up and running on your machine, visit the "Learn" section with introductory guides and documentation on several Livebook features. Here is a sneak peak of the "Welcome to Livebook" guide:

There are more resources for those who are ready to dig deeper:

• Our official documentation with in-depth guides

• Our Integrations page covering the languages, data sources, and libraries that Livebook works with out-of-the-box

• Our blog with news, posts, and screencasts

Installation

We provide several methods for running Livebook, pick the one that best fits your use case.

Desktop app

• Download the installer for Mac and Windows from our homepage

• Latest stable builds: macOS (arm64), macOS (x64), Windows, Linux (arm64), Linux (x64)

• Nightly builds: macOS (arm64), macOS (x64), Windows, Linux (arm64), Linux (x64)

• Builds for particular Livebook version are available on our GitHub releases.

Docker

Running Livebook using Docker is another great option to run Livebook in case you don't have Elixir installed.

# Running with the default configuration
docker run -p 8080:8080 -p 8081:8081 --pull always ghcr.io/livebook-dev/livebook

# In order to access and save notebooks directly to your machine
# you can mount a local directory into the container.
# Make sure to specify the user with "-u $(id -u):$(id -g)"
# so that the created files have proper permissions
docker run -p 8080:8080 -p 8081:8081 --pull always -u $(id -u):$(id -g) -v $(pwd):/data ghcr.io/livebook-dev/livebook

# You can configure Livebook using environment variables,
# for all options see the dedicated "Environment variables" section below
docker run -p 8080:8080 -p 8081:8081 --pull always -e LIVEBOOK_PASSWORD="securesecret" ghcr.io/livebook-dev/livebook

# Or if you need to run on different ports:
docker run -p 8090:8090 -p 8091:8091 --pull always -e LIVEBOOK_PORT=8090 -e LIVEBOOK_IFRAME_PORT=8091 ghcr.io/livebook-dev/livebook

To deploy Livebook on your cloud platform, see our Docker Deployment guide.

For CUDA support, see images with the "cuda" tag.

To try out features from the main branch you can alternatively use the ghcr.io/livebook-dev/livebook:nightly image. See Livebook images.

Embedded devices

If you want to run Livebook on embedded devices, such as Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, etc., check out the Livebook firmware built with Nerves.

Direct installation with Elixir

You can run Livebook on your own machine using just Elixir. You will need Elixir v1.18 or later. Livebook also requires the following Erlang applications: inets, os_mon, runtime_tools, ssl and xmerl. Those applications come with most Erlang distributions but certain package managers may split them apart. For example, on Ubuntu, these Erlang applications can be installed as follows:

sudo apt install erlang-inets erlang-os-mon erlang-runtime-tools erlang-ssl erlang-xmerl erlang-dev erlang-parsetools

Note: The livebook package is meant to be used as a CLI tool. Livebook is not officially supported as a Mix/Hex dependency.

Escript

Running Livebook using Escript makes for a very convenient option for local usage and provides easy configuration via CLI options.

mix do local.rebar --force, local.hex --force
mix escript.install hex livebook

# Start the Livebook server
livebook server

# See all the configuration options
livebook server --help

After you install the escript, make sure you add the directory where Elixir keeps escripts to your $PATH. If you installed Elixir with asdf, you'll need to run asdf reshim elixir once the escript is built.

To try out features from the main branch you can alternatively install the escript directly from GitHub like this:

mix escript.install github livebook-dev/livebook

From source

You can run latest Livebook directly from source.

git clone https://github.com/livebook-dev/livebook.git
cd livebook
mix setup.prod

# Run the Livebook server
MIX_ENV=prod mix phx.server

Security considerations

Livebook is built to document and execute code. Anyone with access to a Livebook instance will be able to access any file and execute any code in the machine Livebook is running.

For this reason, Livebook only binds to the 127.0.0.1, allowing access to happen only within the current machine. When running Livebook in the production environment - the recommended environment - we also generate a token on initialization and we only allow access to the Livebook if said token is supplied as part of the URL.

Environment variables

<!-- Environment variables -->

The following environment variables can be used to configure Livebook on boot:

• LIVEBOOK_ALLOW_URI_SCHEMES - sets additional allowed hyperlink schemes to the Markdown content. Livebook sanitizes links in Markdown, allowing only a few standard schemes by default (such as http and https). Set it to a comma-separated list of schemes.

• LIVEBOOK_APP_SERVICE_NAME - sets the application name used by the cloud provider to aid debugging.

• LIVEBOOK_APP_SERVICE_URL - sets the application url to manage this Livebook instance within the cloud provider platform.

• LIVEBOOK_APPS_BANNER - sets the value to render at the top apps banner.

• LIVEBOOK_APPS_PATH - the directory with app notebooks. When set, the apps are deployed on Livebook startup with the persisted settings. Password-protected notebooks will receive a random password, unless LIVEBOOK_APPS_PATH_PASSWORD is set. When deploying using Livebook's Docker image, consider using LIVEBOOK_APPS_PATH_WARMUP.

• LIVEBOOK_APPS_PATH_PASSWORD - the password to use for all protected apps deployed from LIVEBOOK_APPS_PATH.

• LIVEBOOK_APPS_PATH_WARMUP - sets the warmup mode for apps deployed from LIVEBOOK_APPS_PATH. Must be either "auto" (apps are warmed up on Livebook startup, right before app deployment) or "manual" (apps are warmed up when building the Docker image; to do so add "RUN /app/bin/warmup_apps" to your image). Defaults to "auto".

• LIVEBOOK_AWS_CREDENTIALS - enable Livebook