Matplotlib showing blank figures in all Jupyter notebooks (no errors)

Question

All Matplotlib figures are showing up blank or empty in my Jupyter notebooks.

Code works (for other people); produces no errors.

Reviewed questions here and here .

Restarted Kernels (in multiple notebooks).

Confirmed that Matplotlib is installed via command prompt in Python:

>>> import matplotlib
>>> matplotlib.__version__
'3.1.1'

For reference, I am also running:

• Python (3.7.4)
• Windows 10 Home (Version 10.0.18362, Build 18362)
• Chrome (Version 79.0.3945.130, Official Build, 64-bit)
• JupyterLab extension loaded from Anaconda3 installation

This is happening in all my jupyter notebooks, and saving any figs to .png also saves blank .png files.

Created a simple test bar chart with the following code, which produces a blank interactive figure:

%matplotlib notebook

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

users = [1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000]
x_axis = np.arange(len(users))
x_axis

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.bar(x_axis, users, color='r', alpha=0.5, align="edge")

The resulting interactive fig does show a "Figure 1" gray interactive bar at the top, and also states the following string at the bottom (since there is no ; at the end of the code):

<BarContainer object of 5 artists>

Not interested in switching to matplotlib inline (wish to keep interactive notebooks).

Any thoughts on how to resolve this blank figures issue please? TIA!

Answer 1

...aaaand turns out someone else (who had recently used my computer) had adjusted a setting in Chrome to block ( ie , not show) images . Yikes! So simple. And so frustrating to have not checked the following setting, which I'm sharing here in case someone else has this same issue:

Chrome-->Settings-->Advanced-->Privacy and security-->Site Settings-->Images-->Show all (slider should be turned ON)

Issue resolved. Figs are now showing (eg, on test code above). Cheers!