Configure a first cell by default in Jupyter notebooks

Question

TIs there a way to configure a default first cell for a specific python kernel in the Jupyter notebook? I agree that default python imports go against good coding practices.

Answer 1

Another half-solution: keep the default code in a file, and manually type and execute a %load command in your first cell.

I keep my standard imports in firstcell.py:

%reload_ext autoreload
%autoreload 2

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
... 

Then in each new notebook, I type and run %load firstcell.py in the first cell, and jupyter changes the first cell contents to

# %load firstcell.py
%reload_ext autoreload
%autoreload 2

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns
%matplotlib inline

If you really just want a single import statement, this doesn't get you anything, but if you have several you always want to use, this might help.