# Create a Jupyter Notebook with Templates or Custom Notebooks

Notebooks are a web-based Jupyter IDE with shared persistent storage for long-term development and inter-notebook collaboration, backed by accelerated compute.

When you create a new Paperspace Notebook, you can either choose an existing [template](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/paperspace/notebooks/concepts/notebook-templates/index.html.md) or create a custom notebook using advanced options.

## Using a Template

In the Paperspace console, click the drop-down menu in the top-right corner, then click **GRADIENT**. In the **Projects** section, select the project you want to create a Jupyter notebook for. In the **Notebooks** tab of your project, click **CREATE** to go to the **Launch a notebook** page.

On **Launch a notebook** page, in the **Select a template** section, choose your desired template for your Jupyter environment.

**Note**: When choosing your template, ensure that the notebook is compatible with the machine type as a template may not work with certain machine types.

After selecting your template, the **Select a machine** section appears with a drop-down menu to select your machine type. Free machine is only available on personal accounts, and they have a max auto-shutdown limit of six hours. Finally, in the **Auto-shutdown timeout** section, select the amount of time your machine can idle before it shuts down.

Optionally, at the bottom of the form, click the **View advanced options** button to further configure your notebook, like the notebook’s workspace and container. These options customize the remote environment’s container and workspace settings.

Under the **Workspace** section, you can customize the following attributes:

- **URL**: This is the GitHub repository used as the workspace directory. All the files within this repository are placed in the `/notebooks` directory.
- **Ref**: This is a file that contains a Git commit SHA-1 hash. When referring to the Git commit, you can use the Git reference which is a name for the hash such as `v1.1.1`.
- **Username**: This is your GitHub username.
- **Password**: This is your GitHub password.

Your Docker image is stored in a container registry, like Docker Hub or GitHub. Under the **Container** section, you can customize the following attributes for your Docker container:

- **Name**: This is the name of the container using the syntax `registry/container-name:tag` (for example, `paperspace/Gradient-base:v1`).
- **Registry username**: If you are using a private container, this is the username you use to log in to the container registry.
- **Registry password**: If you are using a private container, this is the password you use to log in to the container registry.
- **Command**: This is the command that your Docker container executes when it starts. By default, the command runs a Jupyter Lab server with specific settings such as root user access, binding to all network interfaces, and disabling the automatic browser launch.

After you complete your notebook’s configuration, click **START NOTEBOOK**.