How to Install PlotJuggler with ROS 2 (Humble & Jazzy)

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For ROS 2 work, PlotJuggler is installed as a ROS package, not as a standalone download — and that package is built on the PJ3 line, not PlotJuggler 4. This guide covers the apt install, the launch command, which ROS distributions are listed, and the snap alternative with its limitations. For non-ROS installs, return to the Install hub or the plain Ubuntu guide. The standalone files themselves are on the Download page.

Before you start

  • A working ROS 2 installation, with your ROS environment sourced in the terminal you will use.
  • Your ROS distribution name — this guide uses $ROS_DISTRO, which your sourced ROS setup sets automatically.
  • Ubuntu package lists updated recently (sudo apt update).

Step 1 — Install the ROS package

The ROS Index lists the plotjuggler_ros package at version 2.3.1. Install it with:

sudo apt install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-plotjuggler-ros

If you prefer to spell the distribution out, the same command for the two most common cases is:

sudo apt install ros-humble-plotjuggler-ros
sudo apt install ros-jazzy-plotjuggler-ros

Use only the line matching your installed distribution. Mixing packages across ROS distributions is the most common cause of the “package not found” and dependency problems covered in our install troubleshooting guide.

Step 2 — Launch PlotJuggler

In a terminal with your ROS environment sourced, launch with:

ros2 run plotjuggler plotjuggler

The executable comes from the core plotjuggler package (the PJ3 application, whose last release is 3.17.2), while plotjuggler_ros provides the ROS integration: topic subscription, rosbag and rosbag2/MCAP loading through the ROS plugin set. For comparison, the ROS 1 equivalent launch command in the PJ3 documentation is rosrun plotjuggler plotjuggler.

Which ROS distributions are supported?

The ROS Index listing for plotjuggler_ros 2.3.1 names these distributions: humble, jazzy, kilted, lyrical and rolling. If your distribution is not in that list, the apt package described above is not the documented route for you — check the ROS Index page for the package before trying workarounds, because availability beyond the index listing is not something we can verify.

One version note matters here: the plugins documentation states that from the v2.3 series onward, the ROS plugins line supports ROS 2 only. ROS 1 support is frozen in older versions. So a modern ROS 2 install gets the maintained plugin line, while ROS 1 users are on a legacy branch by design, not by mistake.

Alternative — the snap, with limitations

The PJ3 documentation also recommends the snap on Ubuntu, sudo snap install plotjuggler, “to ROS users too”, while noting that the snap works with ROS 2 with some limitations. A separate plotjuggler-ros snap also exists. The snap is quick for evaluating PlotJuggler or plotting files, but for day-to-day ROS 2 topic and bag work, the apt package above keeps PlotJuggler inside the same environment as the rest of your ROS tools, which is why this guide leads with it. The plain-Ubuntu snap details are also covered in the Ubuntu install guide.

Alternative — build from source

If you need to modify the plugins or track development, the documented source route is to clone PlotJuggler/plotjuggler_msgs, the main PlotJuggler repository (now under the PlotJuggler GitHub organisation) and PlotJuggler/plotjuggler-ros-plugins into a workspace, then run rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -y and colcon build. For most users the apt package is faster and easier to keep updated.

First checks after installing

  1. Launch with ros2 run plotjuggler plotjuggler and confirm the main window opens.
  2. Load a rosbag or MCAP file you trust and confirm its topics appear.
  3. If you stream live data, start your publisher first, then connect PlotJuggler to the topic stream.

If the package was not found or the launch fails, the ROS section of the install troubleshooting guide works through the distribution-name checks step by step.

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