Installing NLTK

NLTK requires Python versions 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10 or 3.11.

For Windows users, it is strongly recommended that you go through this guide to install Python 3 successfully https://docs.python-guide.org/starting/install3/win/#install3-windows

Setting up a Python Environment (Mac/Unix/Windows)

Please go through this guide to learn how to manage your virtual environment managers before you install NLTK, https://docs.python-guide.org/dev/virtualenvs/

Alternatively, you can use the Anaconda distribution installer that comes “batteries included” https://www.anaconda.com/distribution/

Mac/Unix

  1. Install NLTK: run pip install --user -U nltk

  2. Install Numpy (optional): run pip install --user -U numpy

  3. Test installation: run python then type import nltk

For older versions of Python it might be necessary to install setuptools (see https://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools) and to install pip (sudo easy_install pip).

Windows

These instructions assume that you do not already have Python installed on your machine.

32-bit binary installation

  1. Install Python 3.8: https://www.python.org/downloads/ (avoid the 64-bit versions)

  2. Install Numpy (optional): https://numpy.org/install/

  3. Install NLTK: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/nltk

  4. Test installation: Start>Python38, then type import nltk

Installing Third-Party Software

Please see: https://github.com/nltk/nltk/wiki/Installing-Third-Party-Software

Installing NLTK Data

After installing the NLTK package, please do install the necessary datasets/models for specific functions to work.

If you’re unsure of which datasets/models you’ll need, you can install the “popular” subset of NLTK data, on the command line type python -m nltk.downloader popular, or in the Python interpreter import nltk; nltk.download('popular')

For details, see https://www.nltk.org/data.html