Installation using Isaac Sim Pip Package

The following steps first installs Isaac Sim from pip, then Isaac Lab from source code.

Installing Isaac Sim

From Isaac Sim 4.0 onwards, it is possible to install Isaac Sim using pip. This approach makes it easier to install Isaac Sim without requiring to download the Isaac Sim binaries. If you encounter any issues, please report them to the Isaac Sim Forums.

Preparing a Python Environment

Creating a dedicated Python environment is strongly recommended. It helps:

• Avoid conflicts with system Python or other projects installed on your machine.
• Keep dependencies isolated, so that package upgrades or experiments in other projects do not break Isaac Sim.
• Easily manage multiple environments for setups with different versions of dependencies.
• Simplify reproducibility — the environment contains only the packages needed for the current project, making it easier to share setups with colleagues or run on different machines.

You can choose different package managers to create a virtual environment.

• UV: A modern, fast, and secure package manager for Python.
• Conda: A cross-platform, language-agnostic package manager for Python.
• venv: The standard library for creating virtual environments in Python.

The following instructions are for Isaac Sim 5.X, which requires Python 3.11. If you wish to install Isaac Sim 4.5, please use modify the instructions accordingly to use Python 3.10.

• Create a virtual environment using one of the package managers:

# create a virtual environment named env_isaaclab with python3.11
uv venv --python 3.11 env_isaaclab
# activate the virtual environment
source env_isaaclab/bin/activate

• Ensure the latest pip version is installed. To update pip, run the following command from inside the virtual environment:

pip install --upgrade pip

Installing dependencies

• Install Isaac Sim pip packages:

pip install "isaacsim[all,extscache]==5.1.0" --extra-index-url https://pypi.nvidia.com

• Install a CUDA-enabled PyTorch build that matches your system architecture:

pip install -U torch==2.7.0 torchvision==0.22.0 --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu128

Verifying the Isaac Sim installation

• Make sure that your virtual environment is activated (if applicable)

• Check that the simulator runs as expected:

# note: you can pass the argument "--help" to see all arguments possible.
isaacsim

• It’s also possible to run with a specific experience file, run:

# experience files can be absolute path, or relative path searched in isaacsim/apps or omni/apps
isaacsim isaacsim.exp.full.kit

By installing or using Isaac Sim, I agree to the terms of NVIDIA OMNIVERSE LICENSE AGREEMENT (EULA)
in https://docs.isaacsim.omniverse.nvidia.com/latest/common/NVIDIA_Omniverse_License_Agreement.html
Do you accept the EULA? (Yes/No): Yes

If the simulator does not run or crashes while following the above instructions, it means that something is incorrectly configured. To debug and troubleshoot, please check Isaac Sim documentation and the Isaac Sim Forums.

Installing Isaac Lab

Cloning Isaac Lab

Clone the Isaac Lab repository into your project’s workspace:

git clone git@github.com:isaac-sim/IsaacLab.git

We provide a helper executable isaaclab.sh and isaaclab.bat for Linux and Windows respectively that provides utilities to manage extensions.

./isaaclab.sh --help
usage: isaaclab.sh [-h] [-i] [-f] [-p] [-s] [-t] [-o] [-v] [-d] [-n] [-c] -- Utility to manage Isaac Lab.
optional arguments:
   -h, --help           Display the help content.
   -i, --install [LIB]  Install the extensions inside Isaac Lab and learning frameworks (rl_games, rsl_rl, sb3, skrl) as extra dependencies. Default is 'all'.
   -f, --format         Run pre-commit to format the code and check lints.
   -p, --python         Run the python executable provided by Isaac Sim or virtual environment (if active).
   -s, --sim            Run the simulator executable (isaac-sim.sh) provided by Isaac Sim.
   -t, --test           Run all python pytest tests.
   -o, --docker         Run the docker container helper script (docker/container.sh).
   -v, --vscode         Generate the VSCode settings file from template.
   -d, --docs           Build the documentation from source using sphinx.
   -n, --new            Create a new external project or internal task from template.
   -c, --conda [NAME]   Create the conda environment for Isaac Lab. Default name is 'env_isaaclab'.
   -u, --uv [NAME]      Create the uv environment for Isaac Lab. Default name is 'env_isaaclab'.

Installation

• Install dependencies using apt (on Linux only):

# these dependency are needed by robomimic which is not available on Windows
sudo apt install cmake build-essential

• Run the install command that iterates over all the extensions in source directory and installs them using pip (with --editable flag):

./isaaclab.sh --install # or "./isaaclab.sh -i"

By default, the above will install all the learning frameworks. These include rl_games, rsl_rl, sb3, skrl, robomimic.

If you want to install only a specific framework, you can pass the name of the framework as an argument. For example, to install only the rl_games framework, you can run:

./isaaclab.sh --install rl_games  # or "./isaaclab.sh -i rl_games"

The valid options are all, rl_games, rsl_rl, sb3, skrl, robomimic, and none. If none is passed, then no learning frameworks will be installed.

Verifying the Isaac Lab installation

To verify that the installation was successful, run the following command from the top of the repository:

# Option 1: Using the isaaclab.sh executable
# note: this works for both the bundled python and the virtual environment
./isaaclab.sh -p scripts/tutorials/00_sim/create_empty.py
# Option 2: Using python in your virtual environment
python scripts/tutorials/00_sim/create_empty.py

The above command should launch the simulator and display a window with a black viewport. You can exit the script by pressing Ctrl+C on your terminal. On Windows machines, please terminate the process from Command Prompt using Ctrl+Break or Ctrl+fn+B.

If you see this, then the installation was successful! |🎉|

Train a robot!

You can now use Isaac Lab to train a robot through Reinforcement Learning! The quickest way to use Isaac Lab is through the predefined workflows using one of our Batteries-included robot tasks. Execute the following command to quickly train an ant to walk! We recommend adding --headless for faster training.

./isaaclab.sh -p scripts/reinforcement_learning/rsl_rl/train.py --task=Isaac-Ant-v0 --headless

… Or a robot dog!

./isaaclab.sh -p scripts/reinforcement_learning/rsl_rl/train.py --task=Isaac-Velocity-Rough-Anymal-C-v0 --headless

Isaac Lab provides the tools you’ll need to create your own Tasks and Workflows for whatever your project needs may be. Take a look at our How-to Guides guides like Adding your own learning Library or Wrapping Environments for details.