Basic PyMOL Installation

On Windows

  • Execute the .msi installer and follow the setup wizard

On a Mac

v1.5.0 and later

The Plugins, like APBS, Volume Ramp Editor, and the Molecular Builder are only available in the PyMOLX11Hybrid version of MacPyMOL.  Please rename the downloaded "MacPyMOL.app" to "PyMOLX11Hybrid.app" to enable this functionality.

v1.4.1 and before

  • Unzip MacPyMOL by double clicking it.
  • Move the MacPyMOL.app file to your Applications directory
  • The Volume Ramp Editor and and the Molecular Builder are only available in the PyMOLX11Hybrid version of MacPyMOL.  Please rename the downloaded "MacPyMOL.app" to "PyMOLX11Hybrid.app" to enable this functionality.

On Linux

 

Unpack the .tar.bz2 file, e.g.: tar -jxf pymol-v1.3r1-Linux-x86_64-TclTk8.4.tar.bz2

 On most linux systems:

  • No extra steps required, you can run PyMOL with: cd pymol; ./pymol

On some linux systems, and for all PyMOL versions before v1.7.4:

  • Move into the newly created "pymol" directory and execute the setup.sh script:
    cd pymol/
    sh ./setup.sh
  • Follow the instructions printed to the terminal

Distribution specific packages

Packages named like pymol-v1.8.6.0-CentOS7-x86_64.tar.gz are tightly integrated with the system environment and allow small packages sizes due to fewer bundled dependencies. They typically require from the system:

  • python2.7
  • tkinter
  • libpng

Certain features are not available in these builds:

  • MTZ file import
  • automatic stereochemistry labeling