Convert a Google Colab notebook to PDF
Colab has no PDF export and its Print button prints the whole page. Download the notebook, open it here, and save a clean PDF from your browser.
1In Colab: File → Download → Download .ipynb
Outputs are saved with the file, so run the cells you want in the PDF first.
2Open that file here
Use the button below or drop the file anywhere on the page. It is rendered in your browser and saved as a PDF from there. Nothing is uploaded.
Your notebook starts here
Open a local file to preview its contents. No account needed.
or drop the notebook anywhere on this page
Works for Colab links that open a GitHub notebook. Drive links need the download step above.
See the result first.
Why Colab’s Print gives a bad PDF
Colab is a web app, and File → Print asks the browser to print the app. The notebook is in there somewhere, but so is everything around it.
It prints the window, not the notebook
File → Print in Colab is the browser's print of the Colab page. The file browser, the toolbar and the comment gutter come along, and the notebook gets whatever width is left.
Long outputs are cut off
Colab shows scrolling output boxes. The printer sees the box, not the scroll, so a training log or a long DataFrame ends where the box ends.
Code wraps badly, plots shrink
Code cells are laid out for a screen. On paper the lines break mid-word, and figures are scaled to the column Colab happened to give them.
Colab to PDF in four steps
- 1
Run what you want on paper
Outputs are saved with the notebook, so cells that have not run have nothing to show. Runtime → Run all if in doubt.
- 2
Download the .ipynb
File → Download → Download .ipynb. The file lands in your Downloads folder with the notebook's name.
- 3
Open it here
Drop the file on this page. You see the whole notebook laid out for A4 or Letter, with nothing from the Colab interface around it.
- 4
Save as PDF
Hide the code if the reader only needs the write-up, then Download PDF. Your browser writes the file with real, selectable text.
Three ways to get a PDF out of Colab
| Method | Setup | Time | Hide code | Where it breaks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| This page | Download the .ipynb from Colab | Seconds | One switch | Interactive widgets show a placeholder |
| nbconvert inside Colab | !apt-get install texlive-xetex (~700 MB) | 5–10 minutes, every session | --no-input flag | Missing TeX packages, wide tables, non-Latin text |
| File → Print → Save as PDF | Nothing | Seconds | No | Sidebar in the page, outputs cut off, wrapped code |
The nbconvert route, if you need LaTeX typesetting and have the minutes. Run in a Colab cell, with the notebook uploaded to the session or Drive mounted:
!apt-get install -y texlive-xetex texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-plain-generic !jupyter nbconvert --to pdf --no-input your_notebook.ipynb
The install is around 700 MB and does not persist between sessions. When it fails, it is usually a missing TeX package, a table wider than the page, or characters the default fonts do not cover — the fixes are here.
Built for what Colab notebooks contain
Colab saves a few things other Jupyter frontends do not. DataFrames come wrapped in a toolbar of interactive buttons; those are removed and the table is kept. Package installs and training loops leave hundreds of lines of output; those are folded to their head and tail so the PDF stays readable, with a switch to print them in full. Colab’s own display formats are skipped in favour of the plain HTML and images saved beside them.
Everything runs as JavaScript in this page. Markdown is rendered with markdown-it, code highlighted with highlight.js, maths typeset with KaTeX, and the result is sanitised with DOMPurify. There is no upload endpoint; the source is on GitHub under the MIT licence.
Want it as a web page or a script instead? Colab to HTML · Colab to .py · View the Colab notebook online
Questions
- Why can't I paste my Colab link?
- Most Colab notebooks live in Google Drive, and Drive only serves them to you while you are signed in — a website cannot fetch them, and this one would not want to. Download the .ipynb with File → Download and open the file here. Colab links that open a GitHub notebook (the address contains /github/) can be pasted directly, because the file is public on GitHub.
- Some of my outputs are missing in the PDF
- They were missing in the file. Colab only saves the outputs of cells that have run in the current session; if you opened an old notebook and downloaded it without running it, the code cells are empty of results. Runtime → Run all, wait for it to finish, then download again.
- Are my plots and images included?
- Yes. Matplotlib, seaborn and Plotly's static export are saved into the notebook as images and appear in the PDF at full width. Plotly's interactive charts and ipywidgets need a running kernel and cannot exist on paper; a placeholder marks where they were.
- Can I leave the code out?
- Yes. Turn off the Code switch and the PDF shows only Markdown and outputs — the report without the machinery. It is the equivalent of nbconvert's --no-input, without installing anything.
- What about very long outputs, like pip install logs?
- They are folded by default: outputs longer than 40 lines keep their first 25 and last 10 lines with a note in between, so a package install does not take three pages. Turn off Fold long outputs to print everything.
- How do I convert a Colab notebook to PDF with nbconvert instead?
- In a Colab cell run !apt-get install -y texlive-xetex texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-plain-generic, then !jupyter nbconvert --to pdf your_notebook.ipynb, having first uploaded or mounted the file. Budget five to ten minutes for the TeX install, which is repeated in every new session, and expect it to fail on wide tables and non-Latin characters. It is the route for people who need LaTeX typesetting specifically.
- Does this work for Kaggle notebooks too?
- Yes. Kaggle's File → Download Notebook gives the same .ipynb format. Kaggle has no PDF export of its own, so this is the whole route.
- Is my notebook uploaded?
- No. The file is read and rendered by JavaScript on your computer, and the PDF is written by your browser. There is no server to send it to.
- Is it free?
- Yes. No account, no watermark, no file limit. The code is open source under the MIT licence.