Hosted

• 1: Play
• 2: Google Colab and Cloud Shell
• 3: Github Codespaces

1 - Play

Neurodesk Play provides instant access to our neuroimaging analysis environment directly through your web browser. This service allows you to:

• Start using Neurodesk immediately without any installation.
• Access a wide range of pre-installed neuroimaging tools.
• Try out the platform before setting up a local installation.
• Collaborate with colleagues using a consistent environment.

Note: Neurodesk Play is free but comes with resource limits. For more intensive workloads, consider installing Neurodesk locally or using one of our other hosting options.

Launch Neurodesk Play

The tool below automatically detects the fastest server for your location. Click the Recommended card to start.

Data Transfer

We provide several methods to transfer your files in and out of Neurodesk Play, including drag-and-drop and cloud storage integration. View Data Transfer Documentation →

Usage Acknowledgments

When using these services for research, please include the appropriate acknowledgment:

🇺🇸 US (Jetstream2 / NSF)

“This research was supported by Jetstream2 (NSF award #2005506), which is supported by the National Science Foundation. Jetstream2 is a cloud computing resource managed by the Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute and part of the ACCESS project.”

🇪🇺 Europe (EGI / CESNET-MCC)

“Enabled through services and resources provided by the EGI Federation with the dedicated support of CESNET-MCC. Computational resources were provided by the e-INFRA CZ project (ID:90254), supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic.”

🇦🇺 Australia (ARDC / Nectar)

“This research was supported by use of the Nectar Research Cloud, a collaborative Australian research platform supported by the NCRIS-funded Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC).”

2 - Google Colab and Cloud Shell

Colab

Open a notebook in Google Colab and run the following commands to set up the Neurodesk environment:

import os
os.environ["LD_PRELOAD"] = "";
os.environ["APPTAINER_BINDPATH"] = "/content"
os.environ["MPLCONFIGDIR"] = "/content/matplotlib-mpldir"
os.environ["LMOD_CMD"] = "/usr/share/lmod/lmod/libexec/lmod"

!curl -J -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/neurodesk/neurocommand/main/googlecolab_setup.sh
!chmod +x googlecolab_setup.sh
!./googlecolab_setup.sh

os.environ["MODULEPATH"] = ':'.join(map(str, list(map(lambda x: os.path.join(os.path.abspath('/cvmfs/neurodesk.ardc.edu.au/neurodesk-modules/'), x),os.listdir('/cvmfs/neurodesk.ardc.edu.au/neurodesk-modules/')))))

Once this setup is completed, you can list the available Neurodesk applications like this:

import lmod
await lmod.avail()

and use applications like this:

await lmod.load('fsl/6.0.4')
!bet

This notebook demonstrates how to use all Neurodesk applications in Google Colab: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1g5cnZxj1llRaHmOs4xSglqsXnFkQYuol?usp=sharing

This is a google colab notebook that shows how to integrate with google drive and contains an example how to run fMRIprep in google colab: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/11wVBkjNvrzo2TkUAILtWnPumAeFAfqkl?usp=sharing

and more examples can be found in our example library

Cloud Shell

This also works in a google cloud shell, e.g. for an interactive tutorial in google cloud cloudshell launch-tutorial:

First run this:

curl -J -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/neurodesk/neurocommand/main/googlecloudshell_setup.sh
chmod +x googlecloudshell_setup.sh
./googlecloudshell_setup.sh

and then used in a tutorial.md:

# My First fsl Tutorial in cloudshell

## Step 1: Say Hello
Run the following command to print a message:

```bash
module use /cvmfs/neurodesk.ardc.edu.au/neurodesk-modules/*
ml fsl
bet

The tutorial can be started via:

cloudshell launch-tutorial tutorial.md

Or via a URL:

https://ssh.cloud.google.com/cloudshell/editor?cloudshell_git_repo=REPO_URL&cloudshell_tutorial=path/to/tutorial.md

where cloudshell_git_repo: The URL of the Git repository to clone and cloudshell_tutorial: The relative path to the markdown file inside that repo.

3 - Github Codespaces

Start a GitHub Codespace in the repository of your choice:

Then start the neurodesktop container in a terminal:

docker volume create neurodesk-home &&
sudo docker run \
  --shm-size=1gb -it --security-opt apparmor=neurodeskapp --privileged --user=root --name neurodesktop \
  -v ~/neurodesktop-storage:/neurodesktop-storage \
  --mount source=neurodesk-home,target=/home/jovyan \
  -e NB_UID="$(id -u)" -e NB_GID="$(id -g)" \
  -p 8888:8888 \
  -e NEURODESKTOP_VERSION=2025-12-20 ghcr.io/neurodesk/neurodesktop/neurodesktop:2025-12-20

Then open Neurodesktop in the browser by clicking the “Open in Browser” Button displayed

The token for authentication is displayed in the terminal: