Python – Spyder Plot Inline

While the question has been answered, I'd like to add some useful tips when using matplotlib.pyplot.savefig. The file format can be specified by the extension:

from matplotlib import pyplot as plt

plt.savefig('foo.png')
plt.savefig('foo.pdf')

Will give a rasterized or vectorized output respectively, both which could be useful. In addition, there's often an undesirable, whitespace around the image, which can be removed with:

plt.savefig('foo.png', bbox_inches='tight')

Note that if showing the plot, plt.show() should follow plt.savefig(), otherwise the file image will be blank.

I used %matplotlib inline in the first cell of the notebook and it works. I think you should try:

%matplotlib inline

import matplotlib
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

You can also always start all your IPython kernels in inline mode by default by setting the following config options in your config files:

c.IPKernelApp.matplotlib=<CaselessStrEnum>
  Default: None
  Choices: ['auto', 'gtk', 'gtk3', 'inline', 'nbagg', 'notebook', 'osx', 'qt', 'qt4', 'qt5', 'tk', 'wx']
  Configure matplotlib for interactive use with the default matplotlib backend.