diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 8362e11..5761fac 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ To get started fork this repository, and clone your fork:
 git clone https://github.com/<your_organization>/superqt
 cd superqt
 
-# install in editable mode
+# install in editable mode (this will install PyQt6 as the Qt backend)
 pip install -e .[dev]
 
 # install pre-commit hooks
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 213dc83..3b0a9ee 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -65,6 +65,7 @@ dev = [
     "pydocstyle",
     "rich",
     "types-Pygments",
+    "superqt[test,pyqt6]",
 ]
 docs = [
     "mkdocs-macros-plugin ==1.3.7",