# CairoMakie wont display plots (running from terminal)

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/cairomakie-wont-display-plots-running-from-terminal/67755>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** plotting, makie\
**Created:** [September 6, 2021, 1:57pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/cairomakie-wont-display-plots-running-from-terminal/67755 "2021-09-06T13:57:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![RTbecard](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rtbecard/32/26677_2.png) [@RTbecard](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/RTbecard)\
**Post date:** [September 6, 2021, 1:57pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/cairomakie-wont-display-plots-running-from-terminal/67755/1 "2021-09-06T13:57:55Z")

</div>

Not sure why… but I can’t get Makie plots to display. I’m running julia 1.6.1 from my terminal on PopOS 21.04.

The [docs tell me](https://makie.juliaplots.org/v0.15.2/documentation/faq/) that this is a backend build issue… but when I ran `pkg> test CairoMakie`, all tests passed. I also installed the packages suggsted [here](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/figures-not-appearing-using-makie/20502): `sudo apt-get install ffmpeg cmake xorg-dev build-essential libglfw3` with no luck so far.

Anyone ran into similar issues to this before? I’m at a loss for what my next troubleshooting step should be.

```julia
using CairoMakie
x = range(0, 10, length=100)
y = sin.(x)
lines(x, y)

```

just outputs the structure of the figure object rather than displaying my plot in a new window.

```julia
julia> lines(x, y)
Scene (800px, 600px):
  18 Plots:
    ├ Combined{Makie.poly, Tuple{Vector{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ MakieCore.Text{Tuple{String}}
    ├ Lines{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ MakieCore.Text{Tuple{Vector{Tuple{AbstractString, Point{2, Float32}}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ MakieCore.Text{Tuple{String}}
    ├ Lines{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ MakieCore.Text{Tuple{Vector{Tuple{AbstractString, Point{2, Float32}}}}}
    ├ Lines{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ Lines{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    └ MakieCore.Text{Tuple{String}}
  1 Child Scene:
    └ Scene (728px, 541px)

```

In case its relevant, I never ran into any backend issues using `Plots.jl` so far. Any ideas?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sijo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/da6949/32.png) [@sijo](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/sijo)\
**Post date:** [September 6, 2021, 3:11pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/cairomakie-wont-display-plots-running-from-terminal/67755/2 "2021-09-06T15:11:23Z")

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What kind of output do you expect? Note that CairoMakie is for making SVG/PDF/PNG plots, which most terminals cannot display. GLMakie will display plots in a separate window. See also [No plot with CairoMakie](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/no-plot-with-cairomakie/64914)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![RTbecard](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rtbecard/32/26677_2.png) [@RTbecard](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/RTbecard)\
**Post date:** [September 6, 2021, 3:41pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/cairomakie-wont-display-plots-running-from-terminal/67755/4 "2021-09-06T15:41:03Z")

</div>

Yup, that was it.

I didn’t read this paragraph carefully enough in the [basic tutorial](https://makie.juliaplots.org/v0.15.2/tutorials/basic-tutorial/).

> To see the output of plotting commands when using CairoMakie… The Julia REPL by itself does not have the ability to show plots.

What got me really confused was when I looked at the [FAQ](https://juliahub.com/docs/AbstractPlotting/6fydZ/0.12.12/troubleshooting.html), as it showed an output very similar to what I had but labelled as a symptom of a build issue. I then just assumed that displaying the data structure of the plot was a symptom of a build error.

Thanks for quickly clearing up this confusion for me!