diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 64c0441fd65dc..11ae87fa79c6d 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -6,6 +6,10 @@ The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](http://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/).
 
 ## [unreleased] - YYYY-MM-DD
 
+### Fixed
+
+- Fixed crashing or wrong displaying progressbar because of missing ipywidgets ([#2417](https://github.com/PyTorchLightning/pytorch-lightning/pull/2417))
+
 ### Added
 
 
@@ -20,7 +24,6 @@ The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](http://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/).
 
 ### Fixed
 
-
 ## [0.8.3] - 2020-06-29
 
 ### Fixed
diff --git a/pytorch_lightning/callbacks/progress.py b/pytorch_lightning/callbacks/progress.py
index 358575273f945..472d245f4f1b2 100644
--- a/pytorch_lightning/callbacks/progress.py
+++ b/pytorch_lightning/callbacks/progress.py
@@ -5,9 +5,16 @@
 Use or override one of the progress bar callbacks.
 
 """
+import importlib
 import sys
 
-from tqdm.auto import tqdm
+
+# check if ipywidgets is installed before importing tqdm.auto
+# to ensure it won't fail and a progress bar is displayed
+if importlib.util.find_spec('ipywidgets') is not None:
+    from tqdm.auto import tqdm
+else:
+    from tqdm import tqdm
 
 from pytorch_lightning.callbacks import Callback
 
diff --git a/pytorch_lightning/trainer/lr_finder.py b/pytorch_lightning/trainer/lr_finder.py
index 72228c81394ba..19ba13f588ce3 100755
--- a/pytorch_lightning/trainer/lr_finder.py
+++ b/pytorch_lightning/trainer/lr_finder.py
@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
 """
 Trainer Learning Rate Finder
 """
+import os
+import importlib
 from abc import ABC, abstractmethod
 from typing import Optional, Sequence, Tuple, List, Union
 
@@ -8,8 +10,14 @@
 import torch
 from torch.optim.lr_scheduler import _LRScheduler
 from torch.utils.data import DataLoader
-from tqdm.auto import tqdm
-import os
+
+# check if ipywidgets is installed before importing tqdm.auto
+# to ensure it won't fail and a progress bar is displayed
+if importlib.util.find_spec('ipywidgets') is not None:
+    from tqdm.auto import tqdm
+else:
+    from tqdm import tqdm
+
 
 from pytorch_lightning.core.lightning import LightningModule
 from pytorch_lightning.callbacks import Callback