Google Colab Tips and Tricks

Google Colab Tips and Tricks

  1. Scratchpad Notebook: colab.research.google.com/notebooks/empty.i..
  2. Open Notebooks from GitHub: simply replace github.com with githubtocolab.com. It will redirect you to a Colab notebook.
  3. Timing Execution of Cell: hover over the cell run icon and you will get an estimate of the execution time taken
  4. Run part of a cell: Click Runtime -> Run Selection button or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + Enter
  5. Most commonly used shortcuts:
    • Run cell (Ctrl + Enter)
    • Run cell and add new cell below (Alt + Enter)
    • Run cell and goto the next cell below (Shift + Enter)
    • Comment current line (Ctrl + /)
  6. Jupyter Notebook Keyboard Shortcuts: Click Tools -> Keyboard shortcuts or Just add Ctrl + M before whatever keyboard shortcut you were using in Jupyter. For example
    • add a cell above (Ctrl + M + A)
    • Add a cell below (Ctrl + M + B)
    • Change cell to code (Ctrl + M + Y)
    • Change cell to markdown (Ctrl + M + M)
  7. Jump to Class definition: press Ctrl and then clicking a class name
  8. Run bash commands:
    • Download dataset from the web with !wget <ENTER URL>
    • Install libraries with !pip install <LIBRARY>
    • Clone a git repository with !git clone <REPOSITORY URL>
    • Change directory with !cd
  9. Mount your Google Drive to Colab:
    from google.colab import drive
    drive.mount('/content/gdrive')
    
  10. To upload a file (or several) from your computer, run:
    from google.colab import files
    files.upload()
    
  11. To download a file, run:
    from google.colab import files
    files.download('path/to/your/file')
    
  12. Run R programs in Google Colab: You can use R programming language in Google Colab by going to https://colab.to/r. It will open a new notebook with R set as the kernel instead of Python.
  13. “Open in Colab” Badge: You can add a ‘Open in Colab’ badge to your README.md or jupyter notebooks using the following markdown code: Open In Colab [![Open In Colab](https://colab.research.google.com/assets/colab-badge.svg)](https://colab.research.google.com/notebooks/basic_features_overview.ipynb)
  14. Run Rust programs in Google Colab: Go to https://colab.to/rust. Then rust the first cell. Reload the page. Skip the first and run other cells, or write your own codes.

References:

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