{"id":3756,"date":"2025-06-27T15:13:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T19:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/matlab\/?p=3756"},"modified":"2025-06-27T15:13:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T19:13:14","slug":"using-matlab-on-google-colab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/matlab\/2025\/06\/27\/using-matlab-on-google-colab\/","title":{"rendered":"Using MATLAB on Google Colab"},"content":{"rendered":"
Google recently announced that <\/span>Colab Terminal is Now Free For All Users<\/span><\/a> and a few MathWorkers immediately thought to themselves \"Well, this makes it rather easier to use MATLAB there then!\" and an internal conversation on how to do it kicked off.<\/span><\/div>
This is all rather experimental and rough around the edges and but I'm excited so wanted to share with you all what we got working. I wouldn't suggest using this for production work but maybe you'll have fun playing with it too?<\/span><\/div>

Installing MATLAB into Google Colab and using it in terminal mode<\/span><\/h2>
Once you've opened the Colab terminal, run the following commands to install MATLAB:<\/span><\/div>
wget <\/span>https:\/\/www.mathworks.com\/mpm\/glnxa64\/mpm<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>
chmod <\/span>+x mpm<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>
.\/mpm install <\/span>--release=R2025a --products=MATLAB<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>
This makes use of the <\/span>MathWorks <\/span>mpm<\/span><\/a> tool to download and install MATLAB into Colab.<\/span><\/div>
\"\"<\/img><\/div>
Once this has completed, run MATLAB like this:<\/span><\/div>
\/usr\/local\/MATLAB\/R2025a\/bin\/matlab -nodesktop -licmode onlinelicensing<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>
You'll be prompted:<\/span><\/div>
Please enter your MathWorks Account email address and press Enter:<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>
Do as it asks and you'll get the following prompt:<\/span><\/div>
You need a one-time password to sign in. To get a one-time password, follow these steps:<\/span><\/span><\/div>
1. Go to https:\/\/www.mathworks.com\/mwa\/otp<\/span><\/span><\/div>
2. Enter your MathWorks Account email address.<\/span><\/span><\/div>
3. Copy the generated one-time password.<\/span><\/span><\/div>
4. Return here and enter the password.<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>
Follow the instructions and you should be greeted with MATLAB running in the terminal: <\/span><\/div>
\"\"<\/img><\/div>
Since the Colab terminal doesn't support it, you can't do anything graphical such as plotting and there's no desktop but this is a step in the right direction.<\/span><\/div>

Attempting to use the MATLAB Kernel for Jupyter didn't work<\/span><\/h2>
The <\/span>MATLAB kernel for Jupyter<\/span><\/a> has been available for a couple of years now and has improved quite a bit since <\/span>I first wrote about it in January 2023<\/span><\/a>. I installed this into Colab with the following command at the terminal<\/span><\/div>
pip <\/span>install jupyter-matlab-proxy<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>
This made the MATLAB Kernel available in the <\/span>Runtime->Change runtime type<\/span> section of the Colab menu and it allowed me to select it.<\/span><\/div>
\"\"<\/img><\/div>
However, on attempting to run any MATLAB commands in a notebook, it fell back to the Python kernel. <\/span><\/div>
\"\"<\/img><\/div>
It seems that using user-installed kernels is not currently supported by Colab.<\/span><\/div>

Use the MATLAB Engine for Python in Google Colab<\/span><\/h2>
I have MATLAB installed in Colab and I can run Python notebooks there. So, the next logical pathway to using MATLAB in Colab is to do so via the <\/span>MATLAB Engine for Python<\/span><\/a>. Install the engine by running the following in the Colab terminal<\/span><\/div>
export <\/span>LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:\/usr\/local\/MATLAB\/R2025a\/bin\/glnxa64<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>
python3 <\/span>-m pip install matlabengine<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>
Now, you can create a Python notebook and use the MATLAB engine there. I tried something very simple, just to check if the basics were there.<\/span><\/div>
import <\/span>matlab.engine<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>
eng = matlab.engine.start_matlab(<\/span>\"-licmode onlinelicensing\"<\/span>)<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>
eng.sqrt(4.0)<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>
\"\"<\/img><\/div>

Over to you<\/span><\/h2>
These are just baby-steps to show that this can be done at all. This isn't an officially supported workflow by MathWorks; it's just a few geeks playing around right now. Is this minimal set of functionality useful to you? What more would you like to see? Do my instructions work for you?<\/span><\/div>
<\/div>\n<\/div>