diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index a052c5974..e2b12169f 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -57,7 +57,6 @@ Home-page = "https://github.com/scverse/anndata"
 dev = [
     # dev version generation
     "setuptools_scm",
-    "xarray>=2023.1.0",
     # test speedups
     "pytest-xdist",
 ]
@@ -89,6 +88,7 @@ test = [
     "dask[array]",
     "awkward>=2.3",
     "pytest_memray",
+    "xarray>=2023.1.0",
 ]
 gpu = [
     "cupy",