After installing Anaconda, you will notice a working folder with various applications inside of it. One of these is Anaconda Navigator, which provides a Graphical User Interface (GUI). You can compare it to Windows File Explorer, that is, an environment to manage projects, packages, and environments. The term environment refers to a collection of packages and a Python install. Notice that this is similar to how you would use virtualenv, but this time using a GUI instead of a command prompt to create one (virtualenv is covered in more detail later in this chapter).

After opening Anaconda Navigator, click the Environments tab on the left of the screen and Anaconda Navigator will provide an overview of existing environments and the packages it contains. There's one pre-defined environment available, a so-called root environment that provides you with 150+ pre-installed Python packages. New environments can be made by clicking the Create button on the bottom of the screen. This will automatically install five default Python packages, including pip, which means you're free to use that too for package management. What's interesting about Anaconda Navigator is that, with every new environment, you can choose a preferred Python version and install from a list of 1000+ packages that are available locally if you installed the default Anaconda version and not Miniconda. This list is available by selecting the option Not Installed from the drop-down menu next to the Channels button. You can easily search and select the packages of your choice by using the Search Packages field and hitting Enter. Mark the packages and install them for the environment of your choice. After installation, the package will be listed by name in the environment. If you click the green box with a checkmark next to the package name, you can choose to mark a package for an upgrade, removal, or specific version installation.

After installing the packages, you can start working with an environment by opening up a terminal, Jupyter Notebook, or another Anaconda application with one mouse click on the arrow button inside of the environment of your choice. If you wish to use an IDE instead of one of the options that Anaconda Navigator offers you, be sure to redirect your IDE to the right python.exe file that is used by Anaconda. This file can usually be found at the following path, which is the default installation path of Anaconda:

C:\Users\<UserName>\Anaconda3\python.exe.