Quick start

This guide walks you through protecting your base environment and managing plugins with conda-self.

Prerequisites

• conda 26.1.1 or later

• conda-self installed in base (conda install -n base conda-self)

Protect your base environment

Using conda doctor, check whether base is currently protected:

conda doctor -n base base-protection

If it is not, enable protection:

conda doctor -n base base-protection --fix

This does four things:

1. Tries to save a snapshot of base in conda’s explicit format

2. Clones your current base environment to a new default environment

3. Removes conda packages other than conda, conda-self, configured permanent packages, their dependencies, and installed conda packages named in an available installer snapshot

4. Marks base as frozen so regular conda commands refuse to modify it unless --override-frozen is passed

Tip

You only need to run this once. After protection, use conda self commands to manage plugins in base.

Install a plugin

conda self install conda-index

conda-self installs the package via a subprocess and checks whether it registers as a conda plugin. If validation fails, conda-self uninstalls the requested package. Packages installed as its dependencies may remain.

Update all installed packages

conda self update --all

This updates every installed package in the base environment.

Remove a plugin

conda self remove conda-index

Conda-self protects conda, conda-self, configured permanent packages, and their dependencies from direct removal requests unless --force is passed. Conda’s own transaction checks still apply.

Reset base

If something goes wrong, automatically select a reset mode:

conda self reset

Next steps

• Protecting your base environment – A deeper walkthrough of base protection and what happens under the hood

• Managing plugins – Install, update, and remove plugins with confidence

• Features – How base protection, snapshots, and plugin validation work

• CLI reference – Every command and flag