How do you suppress output in Jupyter running IPython?

Question

How can output to stdout be suppressed?

A semi-colon can be used to supress display of returned objects, for example

>>> 1+1
2

>>> 1+1;   # No output!

However, a function that prints to stdout is not affected by the semi-colon.

>>> print('Hello!')
Hello!

>>> MyFunction()
Calculating values...

How can the output from print / MyFunction be suppressed?

Answer 1

Add %%capture as the first line of the cell. eg

%%capture
print('Hello')
MyFunction()

This simply discards the output, but the %%capture magic can be used to save the output to a variable - consult the docs

Answer 2

Suppress output

Put a ; at the end of a line to suppress the printing of output [ Reference ].

A good practice is to always return values from functions rather than printing values inside a function. In that case, you have the control; if you want to print the returned value, you can; otherwise, it will not be printed just by adding a ; after the function call.

Answer 3

(credit: https://stackoverflow.com/a/23611571/389812 )

You could use io.capture_output :

from IPython.utils import io

with io.capture_output() as captured:
    MyFunction()

to supress (eg capture) stdout and stderr for those lines within the with-statement .

Answer 4

If anyone is interested in clearing all outputs:

1. Go to Cell
2. Go to All Output

Then choose whichever option you like.