Manim is a Python based tool that creates animations of math and technical concepts.

This blog post covers how to install Manim Community Edition on Windows 10 & 11. For a more detailed description of the installation method, including for other OSs, Docker and web, visit the official Manim Community Edition installation pages .

Getting Your System Ready For Manim Community Edition

Python

Manim requires Python. If your Windows device has winget , install Python with:

1winget install Python.Python.3

If you don’t have winget, then download the Python installer .

MikTex

This is optional, but recommended. Installing MikTex will enable Manim to draw equations (such as $y=x^2$) in your animations.

1winget install ChristianSchenk.MiKTeX

If you don’t have winget, then download the MikTex installer .

Ffmpeg

Manim requires Ffmpeg, to generate animations as video files. At the time of writing, Ffmpeg is not available to install via winget.

  1. Download .zip file ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl.zip from the releases page of the GitHub repository .
  2. Unzip the archive to extract folder ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl, move this folder into your Documents folder. For example if the Windows user is called fred then Documents would be located at C:\Users\fred\Documents.
  3. To enable Manim to find Ffmpeg, add a new entry to Path, in the User section of Environment variables, do that by…
    1. Press the Windows key and start typing “env”, select the top search result “Edit the system environment variables”.
    2. The System Properties window will appear, click the button Environment Variables....
    3. A 2nd window will appear, titled Environment Variables. In the top section, titled User variables for fred, click the entry labelled Path, then the Edit... button.
    4. A 3rd window wil be displayed, titled Edit environment variable, click on the New button.
    5. Enter the full path to the bin folder within ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl, for example: C:\Users\fred\Documents\ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl\bin
    6. Click the Ok button. Close all 3 windows regarding environment variables.

To ensure all of the above changes have taken effect, restart the PC.

Installing Manim

Python Virtual Environments

Manim is a Python package, installed by Python’s package manager, pip. To reduce future problems caused dependency conflicts, Manim can be installed in a Python virtual environment.

  1. Create a new folder, to contain your Python (Manim) project, for example ManimDev.
  2. Within ManimDev, open a terminal, create a new Python virtual environment, called “.venv”
    1python -m venv .venv
  3. Start .venv
    1.venv\scripts\activate
  4. Install Manim
    1pip install manim

Stopping & Restarting The Python Virtual Environment

To stop the .venv virtual environment

1deactivate

Restart .venv with…

1.venv\scripts\activate