Gephi Lite v1.0.1: Complete Beginner’s Tutorial

Written by Dr. Verónica Espinoza, November 2025

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by the author

Introduction

Gephi Lite is a free and open-source web application to visualize and explore networks and graphs. It is a web-based, lighter version of Gephi [1].

The genesis of Gephi Lite is routed into academia. Over the last decade, a succession of graph visualization and manipulation prototypes emerged, each addressing specific research requirements. These academic prototypes, funded by various research projects, paved the way for the development of increasingly powerful low-level tools (sigma.js, graphology) [2].

Gephi Lite Developers

Gephi Lite was developed by the OuestWare team: Alexis Jacomy, Paul Girard, and Benoît Simard. Alexis is a web development and data visualization expert who created sigma.js. Paul is a digital humanist who worked ten years as Sciences-Po médialab’s CTO, and Benoît is a web development and graph analysis expert. He worked at Smile and Neo4j [3].

The illustration below presents the developers along with their contact information.

Figure 1. The illustration shows the developers of Gephi Lite (by the author).

Gephi Lite Redesign Timeline

Gephi Lite was announced after Gephi Week 2022 in Paris, a project developed by the OuestWare team (github.com/gephi/gephi-lite). From 2022 to 2025, the team worked on Gephi Lite. It quickly became a usable prototype, and found its place within the Gephi community. However, by early 2025, it became clear that a redesign was needed to improve the experience [4].

Over several months, the OuestWare team worked closely with users to rethink Gephi Lite. This timeline highlights the key steps that led to its new design.

Figure 2. Gephi Lite redesign timeline (by the author).

Gephi Lite on Any Device

Gephi Lite supports touch and multitouch interactions, so that you can browse your networks as you would manipulate a map.

Also, its UI is responsive, so that you can access all of its content from mobiles, tablets and desktops seamlessly [5].

Figure 3. Illustration of the devices on which Gephi Lite can be used (by the author).

How to cite Gephi Lite

Girard P., Jacomy A., Simard B., Jacomy M. (2025). Gephi Lite: a lighter web-based version of Gephi. Digital Humanities 2025. Lisbon.

Gephi Lite Interface Overview

The following illustration shows the homepage of Gephi Lite and the main sections of the tool.

A) The following image displays the homepage of Gephi Lite, showing the file formats currently accepted by the tool as well as the available options for uploading network files.

Figure 4. The illustration shows the homepage of Retina (by the author).

B) The following illustration shows the main sections of the tool, including those that allow you to select the layout, adjust the appearance, apply filters, calculate network metrics, change the theme and language, manipulate the graph, explore your data, and edit it, among other features.

Figure 5. The illustration shows the main sections of Gephi Lite (by the author).

Getting Started with Gephi Lite

In this tutorial, we will learn how to visualize a network in Gephi Lite. For this exercise, I will use a GEXF file that I previously generated in Python using the Spotify API. The file represents a network of related artists on Spotify and includes metadata such as follower counts, popularity, and links to each artist’s images. I am sharing the same GEXF file used in this tutorial, in case you want to follow along and try it yourself!

Download *here* the GEXF file for this exercise.

Figure 6. The illustration shows the steps to download the file for this exercise (by the author).

Below are 10 guided steps to help you complete the exercise and learn how to use Gephi Lite. Each step includes written instructions and an animation to make the process easier to follow. The parameters shown throughout the tutorial are only examples; you can choose your own based on your research needs and the attributes in your network file. The goal of this tutorial is to help you get familiar with this powerful tool so you can later run your own analyses.

🏁Let´s start!

1. Open Gephi Lite and load the file Open Gephi Lite [6] > Select the file I previously shared with you > Open

Figure 7. Animation showing how to load a file into Gephi Lite (by the author).

2. Apply a layout Layout > ForceAtlas2 > Click the icon that generates the best settings for the graph > Start > Stop

Figure 8. Animation showing how to apply the ForceAtlas2 layout in Gephi Lite (by the author).

3. Apply community detection Metrics > Louvain community detection > Compute metric

Figure 9 . Animation showing how to apply community detection in Gephi Lite (by the author).

4. Color communities Appearance > Nodes > Select modularityClass

Figure 10 . Animation showing how to color communities in Gephi Lite (by the author).

5. Adjust node size and add images Appearance > Nodes > Adjust node size by followers (or another attribute) > Modify the minimum and maximum size values > Select the image column that contains the links of the respective images

Figure 11 .Animation showing how to adjust node size and add images in Gephi Lite (by the author).

6. Adjust the size of the labels Appearance > Labels > Set label size based on node size > Adjust the label size value

Figure 12 . Animation showing how to adjust label size in Gephi Lite (by the author).

7. Color and adjust the thickness of the edges Appearance > Edges > Color edges by source nodes (or another attribute) > Adjust edge thickness

Figure 13 . Animation showing how to color and adjust edge thickness in Gephi Lite (by the author).

8. Add filters Filters > Add filter > Select followers > Move the slider to display the graph according to the number of followers

Figure 14. Animation showing how to apply filters in Gephi Lite (by the author).

9. Explore the network Click on a node to view its information > Use the toolbar to explore groups of nodes > Click “Show data” to explore or edit nodes or edges in the table

Figure 15. Animation showing how to explore the network in Gephi Lite (by the author).

10. Save your work Workspace > Save as > Choose “Save locally” or “Save on GitHub” > Or export it as an image or graph file

Figure 16. How to save or export your work in Gephi Lite (by the author).

Conclusions

In this article, we introduced the new version of Gephi Lite (v1.0.1), explored how to use it, and became familiar with its main features. Gephi Lite is an open-access, web-based tool, easy to use, highly intuitive, and now more powerful thanks to the functionalities added in this release. It can be useful whether you are a teacher, student, academic researcher, marketer, communicator, sociologist, anthropologist, among others.

For the OuestWare team, the developers behind Gephi Lite, user experience is a priority. They remain attentive to user feedback and continually refine the platform to offer an improved and more seamless experience.

Without a doubt, if you are looking for a tool that is easy, intuitive, and powerful, the new version of Gephi Lite is an excellent choice.

Visual Credits & Permissions

🚫 All illustrations in this article were created by the author using Draw.io and Canva. Please do not modify or reuse them without permission. If you would like to share this material, please credit the author and provide a link to the original source. ✅ Thank you for respecting academic integrity.

Resources

🌐Gephi Lite tool

📃Gephi Lite documentation

🛠 Gephi-Lite GitHub

💠¿Do you want to continue learning more about Gephi? Review my Gephi Tutorials *here*

References

[1] gephi/gephi-lite [Internet]. Gephi; 2024 [cited 2025 Nov 20]. Available from: https://github.com/gephi/gephi-lite

[2] Bridging Research and Open Source: the genesis of Gephi Lite [Internet]. [cited 2025 Nov 20]. Available from: https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3253-bridging-research-and-open-source-the-genesis-of-gephi-lite/

[3] OuestWare [Internet]. [cited 2025 Nov 23]. Available from: https://www.ouestware.com/en/

[4] Gephi blog [Internet]. Gephi blog. 2025 [cited 2025 Nov 22]. Available from: https://gephi.wordpress.com/

[5} Gephi — The Open Graph Viz Platform [Internet]. [cited 2025 Nov 23]. Available from: https://gephi.org/lite/

[6] Gephi Lite [Internet]. [cited 2025 Nov 22]. Available from: https://lite.gephi.org/v1.0.1/