Troubleshooting#

For a step-by-step debugging workflow, see Diagnose and repair completion problems.

Completions stopped working#

Regenerate the manifest:

conda completion generate

If that doesn’t help, check that the shell hook is installed:

conda completion status
conda completion install --dry-run

“Completion data not found”#

The manifest does not exist. First install or cleared cache.

conda completion generate
conda completion install

“Completion engine binary not found”#

The conda-completer package is missing.

conda install conda-completer

If installed but the error persists, check conda completion status for the binary path.

“Cannot read completion data”#

Corrupt manifest. Delete and regenerate:

Use the cache directory printed by conda completion status, remove completion.msgpack, and run conda completion generate. See Diagnose and repair completion problems for platform-specific commands.

“Shell ‘X’ is not supported”#

Unsupported shell name passed to install or init. Supported:

bash
zsh
powershell
fish

Completions are slow#

If tab completion takes more than 200 ms:

Regenerate the manifest:
```
conda completion generate
```
Check for network filesystems (NFS, FUSE). The completer walks parent directories for project context, which can be slow on network mounts.

New plugin not showing up#

After conda install, conda remove, or conda update, conda-completion regenerates the manifest when registered conda entry point names changed. For plugins installed outside conda’s package manager, or plugin updates that only changed argparse metadata:

conda completion generate

Package or version not showing up#

Refresh package metadata from repodata:

conda completion refresh

If you intentionally generated with --no-repodata, package name and version candidates are omitted until you run conda completion generate again without that flag.

Package completion also requires a non-empty package prefix. Use conda install num<TAB>, not conda install <TAB>, when you want package name candidates.

Completions work in one shell but not another#

Each shell needs its own hook:

conda completion install zsh

Run the command once for the shell that is missing completions. Use bash, zsh, powershell, or fish as the shell argument.

Restart your shell or source the RC file afterward.

Completions work in a normal terminal but not in an IDE#

The IDE terminal is probably not reading the same startup file. Check the configured shell path in the IDE and install the hook for that shell, or add the manual hook to the file it loads.

See Install in nonstandard shell startup files and Remote and automated environments.