# Manim By [Mattt](https://nshipster.com/authors/mattt). Published 2025-10-01. Canonical URL: A few years ago, Twitter user [@38mo1](https://x.com/38mo1/), a chemistry teacher from Japan, posted a [Halloween × Boolean logic meme](https://x.com/38mo1/status/1320004943542009857) that I liked enough to save to `~/Downloads`. And ever since, I’ve had a yearly reminder every October 1st to open the image and get a seasonal chuckle 🎃 More recently, I wanted to teach my kids some advanced snake maths ([long story](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysaIAwxl7fc) 🐍) and remembered that the software [3blue1brown](https://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown) uses for their videos was open-source. Which is all to say that this year for Halloween, NSHipster is dressing up as a beloved YouTuber. How’d I do? [![Animated explainer of the logical operators behind trick or treat, with narration](https://nshipster.com/assets/TrickXORTreat-poster-5bf9e30715b1bfde.png)](https://nshipster.com/assets/TrickXORTreat-7d8d639c256696a2.mp4) _Neat, right?_ Everything used to create that video is [available on GitHub](https://github.com/nshipster/trick-xor-treat). Read on to learn more about how to get started on your next great explainer. --- Back in 2015, Grant Sanderson found himself at a hackathon with a desire to practice his Python skills. What emerged was “very scrappy code for visualizing functions as transformations” — a playful experiment that would eventually become the foundation of both the 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel (now 6.5+ million subscribers strong) and Manim itself. > By 2020, the community wanted stability and documentation. A fork emerged: **Manim Community Edition (ManimCE)** for general use, while Sanderson’s version became **ManimGL** for his own experimentation. Today both versions thrive with distinct purposes. ## 0 to 1 Manim has a reputation for being difficult to install. Some of this is a natural consequence for a tool whose audience extends to self-described non-programmers. Some of this is intrinsic to working with motion graphics. And being written in Python doesn’t do it any favors (though `uv` pretty much solves all the complaints anyone could have). Docker was more or less invented to solve the problem of packaging Python applications with system dependencies, so it’s entirely appropriate to wash your hands of everything and [run Manim with Docker](https://docs.manim.community/en/stable/installation/docker.html): ```shell $ docker run --rm -it -v "/full/path/to/your/directory:/manim" manimcommunity/manim manim -qm scene.py MySceneName ``` …but that feels like giving up. And besides, you’ll appreciate having a proper Python development environment once you’re up-and-running. Stick with me, and I promise everything will be A-OK (pinky swear 🤙). ### An opinionated setup guide for Manim on macOS in 2026 First, let’s do some _mise en place_: ```shell # Install mise $ brew install mise # Install Python and uv $ mise use -g python@3.13 uv@latest ``` - [Homebrew](https://brew.sh/) is a package manager for macOS. It’s the best way to install the system dependencies we need to run Manim. - [Mise](https://mise.jdx.dev/) is a polyglot tool manager. While you _could_ use Homebrew to install Python, you often need to keep a few versions around to work across different projects. So that’s what we’ll recommend here. > Mise is slick. I like it way more than anything else I've tried, and I think you'll like it, too. - [uv](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/) is a Python package manager. It’s wicked fast and _just works™_. > It’s hard to say too many nice things about `uv`. It really is that good. Now, let’s create our project and make ourselves at home: ```shell # Create a new project $ uv init my-explainer $ cd my-explainer # Now open with your preferred $EDITOR ``` Next, go ahead and install Manim’s system dependencies: ```shell # Install Manim dependencies $ brew install pkg-config cairo # for graphics $ brew install --cask mactex-no-gui # for ƒοrmυℓαѕ $ brew install sox # for voiceovers ``` - [Cairo](https://www.cairographics.org/) is a 2D graphics library. You need `pkg-config` to get the Pycairo bindings working properly. - [MacTeX](https://www.tug.org/mactex/) is a LaTeX distribution for macOS. You’ll need this to make a proper maths explainer with impressive-looking formulas. We recommend downloading `mactex-no-gui`, which forgoes the GUI apps that ship in the full version. - [SoX](https://sourceforge.net/projects/sox/) is a utility for converting audio files to different formats. Manim has some nice-_ish_ affordances for putting voice-overs into your scenes, and you’ll need SoX to take advantage of them. Finally, let’s run a health check to see if we’re still on the happy path: ```shell # Add Manim to the project $ uv add manim # Is everything working? (🫣) $ uv run manim checkhealth ``` _Huzzah!_ > I hope that’s what you exclaimed, at least. If luck’s not on your side, there’s always Docker 🤷🏻‍♂️ ## Setting the Scene The Manim API is [rich and well-documented](https://docs.manim.community/en/stable/tutorials_guides.html), with an [extensive collection of examples](https://docs.manim.community/en/stable/examples.html). Rather than attempt to explain everything here, let’s look at one concrete example to get a sense of how it all works. Here’s a standalone “Trick XOR Treat” scene: ```python from manim import * class TrickXORTreat(Scene): def construct(self): # Panel background panel_bg = RoundedRectangle(width=7, height=5, corner_radius=0.2).set_fill( GREY, opacity=1 ) # Title title = Text("Trick XOR Treat").scale(0.8) title.move_to(panel_bg.get_top() + DOWN * 0.4) # Two circles for the Venn diagram c1 = Circle(radius=1.4, color=BLACK).move_to(LEFT * 0.8) c2 = Circle(radius=1.4, color=BLACK).move_to(RIGHT * 0.8) # Create individual fill shapes for XOR (exclusive OR) left_only = Difference(c1, c2).set_fill(ORANGE, opacity=0) right_only = Difference(c2, c1).set_fill(ORANGE, opacity=0) center = Intersection(c1, c2).set_fill(GREY, opacity=0) # XOR excludes center # Create faces on left and right sections face = VGroup() # Left face left_eye = Circle(radius=0.2, color=BLACK, fill_opacity=1) left_eye.move_to(left_only.get_center() + UL * 0.3) left_mouth = ParametricFunction( lambda t: [t, 0.15 * np.sin(t * PI * 5), 0], t_range=[-0.3, 0.3] ).set_stroke(color=BLACK, width=8) left_mouth.move_to(left_only.get_center() + DOWN * 0.2) # Right face right_eye = Circle(radius=0.2, color=BLACK, fill_opacity=1) right_eye.move_to(right_only.get_center() + UR * 0.3) right_mouth = ParametricFunction( lambda t: [t, 0.15 * np.sin(t * PI * 5), 0], t_range=[-0.3, 0.3] ).set_stroke(color=BLACK, width=8) right_mouth.move_to(right_only.get_center() + DOWN * 0.2) face.add(left_eye, left_mouth, right_eye, right_mouth) # Combine everything panel = VGroup( panel_bg, left_only, right_only, center, VGroup(c1, c2), # Circle outlines title, face, ) panel.move_to(ORIGIN) # Animate the panel appearing with smooth scaling self.play(FadeIn(panel_bg, scale=1.1), Write(title, run_time=1.2), run_time=1.0) # Draw circles sequentially self.play(Create(c1, run_time=1.0)) self.wait(0.5) self.play(Create(c2, run_time=1.0)) self.wait(0.5) # Dramatic filling animations with smooth rate functions self.play( left_only.animate.set_fill(ORANGE, opacity=1), run_time=1.2, rate_func=smooth, ) self.wait(0.5) self.play( right_only.animate.set_fill(ORANGE, opacity=1), run_time=1.2, rate_func=smooth, ) self.wait(0.5) # Animate faces appearing on top of fills with bounce self.play(FadeIn(face, shift=UP * 0.3, scale=0.8), run_time=0.8) # Final pause self.wait(1.5) ``` The Manim API is refreshingly procedural— a nice break from the declarative nature of SwiftUI, if you ask me. You create objects, position them, and then explicitly tell them what to do. The `.animate` syntax provides some syntactic sugar for transformations, but at its core, this is imperative programming at its finest. > As far as I can tell, `Scene` objects aren’t composable. Or at least there wasn’t an immediately obvious way to do so (please correct me if I’m wrong). Rather than fussing over that, I plowed ahead with writing a giant `construct` method. ## Enter the Development Loop Our example project includes a Mise task for quickly previewing our scene. It runs Manim at a low [resolution](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1unkluyh2Ks) (480p) and [frame rate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyqjTZHRdRs) (15 fps), and then opens the generated file in QuickTime Player. > It also does a `killall` first to make sure the file opens fresh. Something about the contents of an open file changing doesn’t sit well with ‘ole bluey ```shell $ mise run preview ``` The project also has a `render` task for when you’re ready to share it around: ```shell $ mise run render ``` If everything works as intended, you should see something like this: [![Rendered animation of two overlapping circles under the title Trick XOR Treat](https://nshipster.com/assets/TrickORTreat-poster-8d568de63c0ae31e.png)](https://nshipster.com/assets/TrickORTreat-76903e31740f014f.mp4) ## (Voiceover) No 3blue1brown explainer video would be complete without the dulcet baritone of its creator. Alas, Mr. Sanderson had previous obligations that took him away from our costume party, so we’ll have to improvise. Let’s crank up the spook factor and have an AI… _ghost? I guess?_ narrate our flick. [ElevenLabs](https://elevenlabs.io/) has some scary-good text-to-speech models. While `manim-voiceover` provides integration, it’s currently a bit temperamental with Python 3.13 and doesn’t support the latest [v3 models](https://elevenlabs.io/v3) for hyper-realistic voiceovers. > The official `manim-voiceover` package doesn’t play nicely with Python 3.13, and doesn’t support ElevenLabs’ SOTA v3 models. I found [a fork](https://pypi.org/project/manim-voiceover-fixed/) that got me what I needed, but YMMV. > > Here’s the error message I wrestled with for the better part of an hour, for posterity: > > ```console > uv add manim-voiceover[elevenlabs,transcribe] openai-whisper > × Failed to build `openai-whisper==20230314` > ├─▶ The build backend returned an error > ╰─▶ Call to `setuptools.build_meta:__legacy__.build_wheel` failed (exit status: 1) > ``` To get started, you import from `manim_voiceover` (`_fixed`) and update the scene to inherit from `VoiceoverScene`. ```python from manim_voiceover_fixed import VoiceoverScene from manim_voiceover_fixed.services.elevenlabs import ElevenLabsService class TrickXORTreat(VoiceoverScene): def construct(self): self.set_speech_service( ElevenLabsService( voice_name="Liam", model="eleven_v3", transcription_model=None, # <-- workaround for https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim-voiceover/issues/114 ) ) with self.voiceover( text="""[annoyingly high-pitch nasal pedantic] Well, actually, it's an exclusive or, also known as XOR...""" ): # This wait() automatically waits until the voiceover finishes! self.wait() ``` The `wait()` inside the context manager waits until the voiceover finishes — no manual timing required. For recorded voiceovers especially, this dramatically cuts down on how much time you spend in post getting the timing right. In fact, the finished video at the top was entirely rendered by Manim— without any touch-ups in Final Cut or Premiere! > It’s genuinely unnerving how good these frontier text-to-speech models have gotten. The fact that you can add annotations like `[kid sing-songy]` or `[annoyingly high-pitch nasal pedantic]` and have the model _actually deliver_ is… _(dare I say it?)_ spooky The first time you run this code, Manim will helpfully (albeit unexpectedly) prompt you to enter an API token, which you can get [in your account dashboard](https://elevenlabs.io/app/developers). That’ll get saved to an [`.env` file](https://nshipster.com/1password-cli/) and that should be the end of it. --- The best explainer videos don’t just teach, they spark curiosity, they delight, they make complex ideas feel approachable. That’s what drew me to 3blue1brown in the first place, and why I’ve kept that silly meme in my Downloads folder all these years. So if you’ve been sitting on a meme in your `~/Downloads` folder, or just want an excuse to dust off those Python skills, maybe this Halloween _you_ dress up as a math YouTuber, too. The costume’s open source, and honestly? It’s a pretty good look.