How do I prevent Conda from activating the base environment by default?

Question

I recently installed anaconda2 on my Mac. By default Conda is configured to activate the base environment when I open a fresh terminal session.

I want access to the Conda commands (i.e. I want the path to Conda added to my $PATH which Conda does when initialised so that's fine).

But I don't ordinarily program in python, and I don't want Conda to activate an environment by default.

When first executing conda init from the prompt, Conda adds the following to my .bash_profile:

# >>> conda initialize >>>
# !! Contents within this block are managed by 'conda init' !!
__conda_setup="$('/Users/geoff/anaconda2/bin/conda' 'shell.bash' 'hook' 2> /dev/null)"
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    eval "$__conda_setup"
else
if [ -f "/Users/geoff/anaconda2/etc/profile.d/conda.sh" ]; then
    . "/Users/geoff/anaconda2/etc/profile.d/conda.sh"
else
    export PATH="/Users/geoff/anaconda2/bin:$PATH"
fi
# fi
unset __conda_setup
# <<< conda initialize <<<

If I comment out the whole block, then I can't activate any Conda environments.

I tried to comment out the whole block except for

export PATH="/Users/geoff/anaconda2/bin:$PATH"

But then when I started a new session and tried to activate an environment, I got this error message:

CommandNotFoundError: Your shell has not been properly configured to use 'conda activate'.

This question (and others like it) are helpful, but doesn't ultimately answer my question and is more suited for linux users.

For clarification, I'm not asking to remove the (base) from my $PS1 I'm asking for Conda not to activate base when I open a terminal session.

Answer 1

I have conda 4.6 with a similar block of code that was added by conda. In my case, there's a conda configuration setting to disable the automatic base activation:

conda config --set auto_activate_base false

The first time you run it, it'll create a ./condarc in your home directory with that setting to override the default.

This wouldn't de-clutter your .bash_profile but it's a cleaner solution without manual editing that section that conda manages.