How to Fully Automate a Kaggle Notebook that Requires a Kernel Restart Mid-Run for Library Installation

admin2026-04-11 172 5

1 min read

last active 4/11/2026

HOT

I've been working on a Kaggle notebook that requires installing a custom library mid-run, which necessitates a kernel restart. This is a huge pain, especially when trying to automate the entire process. I've tried using

code

!pip install

and then

code

importlib.reload()

but it doesn't seem to work as expected. Has anyone found a reliable way to fully automate this process? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

kaggle

automation

kernel-restart

admin2026-04-11

code

!pip install

and then

code

importlib.reload()

but it doesn't seem to work as expected. Has anyone found a reliable way to fully automate this process? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

1 min read

last active 4/11/2026

HOT

Comments (5)

kathleen_gray4/6/2026

Why do I have to restart my kernel to install a library? This is like having to reboot your computer every time you download a new app! Come on, Kaggle.

eric_reyes4/6/2026

This is a known issue with Kaggle. One workaround is to use Docker to create a custom environment with all the libraries pre-installed. It's a bit more involved, but it's worth it if you're doing a lot of automated runs.

nathan_dunn4/6/2026

Have you tried using a requirements.txt file? You can specify all your dependencies there and then use !pip install -r requirements.txt to install them all at once. It's a bit of a hack, but it works for me.

lauren_knight4/6/2026

I had the same problem and ended up using Google Colab instead. It doesn’t require a kernel restart for library installations, and it integrates well with Kaggle datasets.

christina_kim4/6/2026

Have you tried using a Jupyter notebook locally and then uploading it to Kaggle? You can install all your libraries locally and then upload the notebook to Kaggle.