To get started working with Python, you’ll need to have access to the Python interpreter. There are several common ways to accomplish this. In this article, you will learn how to install the latest version of Python 3 on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.
Many operating systems, such as **macOS **and Linux, come with Python pre-installed. The version of **Python **that comes with your operating system is called your system Python.
Table of Contents
To get started working with Python 3, you’ll need to have access to the Python interpreter. There are several common ways to accomplish this:
Alternatively, there are several websites that allow you to access a Python interpreter online without installing anything on your computer at all.
Note: There is a chance that Python may have been shipped with your operating system and is already installed. Even if that is the case, it may be that the installed version is outdated, in which case you will want to obtain the latest version anyhow.
In this Python installation guide, you’ll see step by step how to set up a Installing Python 3 distribution on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. So let’s get started!
It is highly unlikely that your Windows system shipped with Python already installed. Windows systems typically do not. Fortunately, installing does not involve much more than downloading the Python installer from the python.org website and running it. Let’s take a look at how to install Python 3 on Windows:
For Windows, you can choose either the 32-bit or 64-bit installer. Here’s what the difference between the two comes down to:* If your system has a 32-bit processor, then you should choose the 32-bit installer.
Note: Remember that if you get this choice “wrong” and would like to switch to another version of Python, you can just uninstall Python and then re-install it by downloading another installer from python.org.### Step 2: Run the Installer
Once you have chosen and downloaded an installer, simply run it by double-clicking on the downloaded file. A dialog should appear that looks something like this:
Important: You want to be sure to check the box that says Add Python 3.x to PATH as shown to ensure that the interpreter will be placed in your execution path.
Then just click Install Now.a That should be all there is to it. A few minutes later you should have a working Python 3 installation on your system.
If you are running Windows 10 Creators or Anniversary Update, you actually have another option for installing Python. These versions of Windows 10 include a feature called the Windows Subsystem for Linux, which allows you to run a Linux environment directly in Windows, unmodified and without the overhead of a virtual machine.
Once you have installed the Linux distribution of your choice, you can install Python 3 from a Bash console window, just as you would if you were running that Linux distribution natively. (See below.)
There is a very good chance your Linux distribution has Python installed already, but it probably won’t be the latest version, and it may be Python 2 instead of Python 3.
To find out what version(s) you have, open a terminal window and try the following commands:
python --version
python2 --version
python3 --version
One or more of these commands should respond with a version, as below:
$ python3 --version
Python 3.6.5
If the version shown is Python 2.x.x or a version of Python 3 that is not the latest (3.6.5 as of this writing), then you will want to install the latest version. The procedure for doing this will depend on the Linux distribution you are running.
Note that it is frequently easier to use a tool called pyenv
to manage multiple Python versions on Linux. To learn more about it, see our article here.
Depending on the version of the Ubuntu distribution you run, the Python install instructions vary. You can determine your local Ubuntu version by running the following command:
$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS
Release: 16.04
Codename: xenial
Depending on the version number you see under Release
in the console output, follow the instructions below:
python3
.$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install python3.6
python3.6
.$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install python3.6
python3.6
.Mint and Ubuntu use the same package management system, which frequently makes life easier. You can follow the instructions above for Ubuntu 14.04. The “deadsnakes” PPA works with Mint.
We found sources that indicated that the Ubuntu 16.10 method would work for Debian, but we never found a path to get it to work on Debian 9. Instead, we ended up making Python from source as listed below.
One issue with Debian, however, is that it generally does not install the sudo
command by default. To install it, you’ll need to do the following before you carry out the Compiling Python From Source instructions below:
$ su
$ apt-get install sudo
$ vi /etc/sudoers
After that, open the /etc/sudoers
file using the sudo vim
command (or your favorite text editor.) Add the following line of text to the end of the file, replacing your_username
with your actual username:
your_username ALL=(ALL) ALL
We found several sites describing how to get zypper
to install the latest version of Python, but they seemed problematic or outdated. We did not manage to get any of them to work successfully, so we fell back to building Python from source. To do that, you will need to install the development tools, which can be done in YaST
(via the menus) or by using zypper
:
$ sudu zypper install -t pattern devel_C_C++
This step took a while and involved the installation of 154 packages, but once it was completed, we were able to build the source as shown in the Compiling Python From Source section above.
The IUS Community does a nice job of providing newer versions of software for “Enterprise Linux” distros (i.e. Red Hat Enterprise and CentOS). You can use their work to help you install Python 3.
To install, you should first update your system with the yum package manager:
$ sudo yum update
$ sudo yum install yum-utils
You can then install the CentOS IUS package which will get you up to date with their site:
$ sudo yum install https://centos7.iuscommunity.org/ius-release.rpm
Finally you can then install Python and Pip:
$ sudo yum install python36u
$ sudo yum install python36u-pip
Thanks to Jani Karhunen for his excellent writeup for CentOS 7.
Fedora has a roadmap to switch to Python 3 as the default Python published here. It indicates that the current version and the next few versions will all ship with Python 2 as the default, but Python 3 will be installed. If the python3
installed on your version is not 3.6, you can use the following command to install it:
$ sudo dnf install python36
Arch Linux is fairly aggressive about keeping up with Python releases. It is likely you already have the latest version. If not, you can use this command:
$ packman -S python
Sometimes your Linux distribution will not have the latest version of Python, or maybe you just want to be able to build the latest, greatest version yourself. Here are the steps you need to take to build Python from source:
To start, you need to get the Python source code. Python.org makes this fairly easy. If you go to the Downloads page, you will see the latest source for Python 3 at the top. (Make sure you don’t grab Legacy Python, Python 2.)
When you select the version, at the bottom of the page there is a Files section. Select the Gzipped source tarball and download it to your machine. If you prefer a command line method, you can easily use wget
to download it to your current directory:
$ wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.6.5/Python-3.6.5.tgz
There are a few distro-specific steps involved in building Python from scratch. The goal of each step is the same on all distros, but you might need to translate to your distribution if it does not use apt-get
:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install -y
portion:# For apt-based systems (like Debian, Ubuntu, and Mint)
$ sudo apt-get install -y make build-essential libssl-dev zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev libreadline-dev libsqlite3-dev wget curl llvm libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev xz-utils tk-dev
# For yum-based systems (like CentOS)
$ sudo yum -y groupinstall development
$ sudo yum -y install zlib-devel
Python-3.6.5
under the one you are in:$ tar xvf Python-3.6.5.tgz
$ cd Python-3.6.5
./configure
tool to prepare the build:$ ./configure --enable-optimizations --with-ensurepip=install
make
. The -j
option simply tells make
to split the building into parallel steps to speed up the compilation. Even with the parallel builds, this step can take a several minutes:$ make -j 8
altinstall
target here in order to not overwrite the system’s version of Python. Since you’re installing Python into /usr/bin
, you’ll need to run as root:$ sudo make altinstall
Warning: Please only use the
altinstall
target onmake
. Using theinstall
target will overwrite thepython
binary. While this seems like it would be cool, there are big portions of the system that rely on the pre-installed version of Python.#### Step 4: Verify Your Python Install
Finally, you can test out your new Python version:
$ python3.6 -V
Python 3.6.5
While current versions of macOS (previously known as “Mac OS X”) include a version of Python 2, it is likely out of date by a few months. Also, this tutorial series uses Python 3, so let’s get you upgraded to that.
The best way we found to install Python 3 on macOS is through the Homebrew package manager. This approach is also recommended by community guides like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python.
To get started, you first want to install Homebrew:
At this point, you’re likely waiting for the command line developer tools to finish installing, and that’s going to take a few minutes. Time to grab a coffee or tea!
You can continue installing Homebrew and then Python after the command line developer tools installation is complete:
Whew! Now that the Homebrew package manager is set up, let’s continue on with installing Python 3 on your system.
Once Homebrew has finished installing, return to your terminal and run the following command:
$ brew install python3
Note: When you copy this command, be sure you don’t include the ```Many operating systems, such as **macOS **and Linux, come with Python pre-installed. The version of **Python **that comes with your operating system is called your system Python.
Table of Contents
To get started working with Python 3, you’ll need to have access to the Python interpreter. There are several common ways to accomplish this:
Alternatively, there are several websites that allow you to access a Python interpreter online without installing anything on your computer at all.
Note: There is a chance that Python may have been shipped with your operating system and is already installed. Even if that is the case, it may be that the installed version is outdated, in which case you will want to obtain the latest version anyhow.
In this Python installation guide, you’ll see step by step how to set up a Installing Python 3 distribution on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. So let’s get started!
It is highly unlikely that your Windows system shipped with Python already installed. Windows systems typically do not. Fortunately, installing does not involve much more than downloading the Python installer from the python.org website and running it. Let’s take a look at how to install Python 3 on Windows:
For Windows, you can choose either the 32-bit or 64-bit installer. Here’s what the difference between the two comes down to:* If your system has a 32-bit processor, then you should choose the 32-bit installer.
Note: Remember that if you get this choice “wrong” and would like to switch to another version of Python, you can just uninstall Python and then re-install it by downloading another installer from python.org.### Step 2: Run the Installer
Once you have chosen and downloaded an installer, simply run it by double-clicking on the downloaded file. A dialog should appear that looks something like this:
Important: You want to be sure to check the box that says Add Python 3.x to PATH as shown to ensure that the interpreter will be placed in your execution path.
Then just click Install Now. That should be all there is to it. A few minutes later you should have a working Python 3 installation on your system.
If you are running Windows 10 Creators or Anniversary Update, you actually have another option for installing Python. These versions of Windows 10 include a feature called the Windows Subsystem for Linux, which allows you to run a Linux environment directly in Windows, unmodified and without the overhead of a virtual machine.
Once you have installed the Linux distribution of your choice, you can install Python 3 from a Bash console window, just as you would if you were running that Linux distribution natively. (See below.)
There is a very good chance your Linux distribution has Python installed already, but it probably won’t be the latest version, and it may be Python 2 instead of Python 3.
To find out what version(s) you have, open a terminal window and try the following commands:
python --version
python2 --version
python3 --version
One or more of these commands should respond with a version, as below:
$ python3 --version
Python 3.6.5
If the version shown is Python 2.x.x or a version of Python 3 that is not the latest (3.6.5 as of this writing), then you will want to install the latest version. The procedure for doing this will depend on the Linux distribution you are running.
Note that it is frequently easier to use a tool called pyenv
to manage multiple Python versions on Linux. To learn more about it, see our article here.
Depending on the version of the Ubuntu distribution you run, the Python install instructions vary. You can determine your local Ubuntu version by running the following command:
$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS
Release: 16.04
Codename: xenial
Depending on the version number you see under Release
in the console output, follow the instructions below:
python3
.$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install python3.6
python3.6
.$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install python3.6
python3.6
.Mint and Ubuntu use the same package management system, which frequently makes life easier. You can follow the instructions above for Ubuntu 14.04. The “deadsnakes” PPA works with Mint.
We found sources that indicated that the Ubuntu 16.10 method would work for Debian, but we never found a path to get it to work on Debian 9. Instead, we ended up making Python from source as listed below.
One issue with Debian, however, is that it generally does not install the sudo
command by default. To install it, you’ll need to do the following before you carry out the Compiling Python From Source instructions below:
$ su
$ apt-get install sudo
$ vi /etc/sudoers
After that, open the /etc/sudoers
file using the sudo vim
command (or your favorite text editor.) Add the following line of text to the end of the file, replacing your_username
with your actual username:
your_username ALL=(ALL) ALL
We found several sites describing how to get zypper
to install the latest version of Python, but they seemed problematic or outdated. We did not manage to get any of them to work successfully, so we fell back to building Python from source. To do that, you will need to install the development tools, which can be done in YaST
(via the menus) or by using zypper
:
$ sudu zypper install -t pattern devel_C_C++
This step took a while and involved the installation of 154 packages, but once it was completed, we were able to build the source as shown in the Compiling Python From Source section above.
The IUS Community does a nice job of providing newer versions of software for “Enterprise Linux” distros (i.e. Red Hat Enterprise and CentOS). You can use their work to help you install Python 3.
To install, you should first update your system with the yum package manager:
$ sudo yum update
$ sudo yum install yum-utils
You can then install the CentOS IUS package which will get you up to date with their site:
$ sudo yum install https://centos7.iuscommunity.org/ius-release.rpm
Finally you can then install Python and Pip:
$ sudo yum install python36u
$ sudo yum install python36u-pip
Thanks to Jani Karhunen for his excellent writeup for CentOS 7.
Fedora has a roadmap to switch to Python 3 as the default Python published here. It indicates that the current version and the next few versions will all ship with Python 2 as the default, but Python 3 will be installed. If the python3
installed on your version is not 3.6, you can use the following command to install it:
$ sudo dnf install python36
Arch Linux is fairly aggressive about keeping up with Python releases. It is likely you already have the latest version. If not, you can use this command:
$ packman -S python
Sometimes your Linux distribution will not have the latest version of Python, or maybe you just want to be able to build the latest, greatest version yourself. Here are the steps you need to take to build Python from source:
To start, you need to get the Python source code. Python.org makes this fairly easy. If you go to the Downloads page, you will see the latest source for Python 3 at the top. (Make sure you don’t grab Legacy Python, Python 2.)
When you select the version, at the bottom of the page there is a Files section. Select the Gzipped source tarball and download it to your machine. If you prefer a command line method, you can easily use wget
to download it to your current directory:
$ wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.6.5/Python-3.6.5.tgz
There are a few distro-specific steps involved in building Python from scratch. The goal of each step is the same on all distros, but you might need to translate to your distribution if it does not use apt-get
:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install -y
portion:# For apt-based systems (like Debian, Ubuntu, and Mint)
$ sudo apt-get install -y make build-essential libssl-dev zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev libreadline-dev libsqlite3-dev wget curl llvm libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev xz-utils tk-dev
# For yum-based systems (like CentOS)
$ sudo yum -y groupinstall development
$ sudo yum -y install zlib-devel
Python-3.6.5
under the one you are in:$ tar xvf Python-3.6.5.tgz
$ cd Python-3.6.5
./configure
tool to prepare the build:$ ./configure --enable-optimizations --with-ensurepip=install
make
. The -j
option simply tells make
to split the building into parallel steps to speed up the compilation. Even with the parallel builds, this step can take a several minutes:$ make -j 8
altinstall
target here in order to not overwrite the system’s version of Python. Since you’re installing Python into /usr/bin
, you’ll need to run as root:$ sudo make altinstall
Warning: Please only use the
altinstall
target onmake
. Using theinstall
target will overwrite thepython
binary. While this seems like it would be cool, there are big portions of the system that rely on the pre-installed version of Python.#### Step 4: Verify Your Python Install
Finally, you can test out your new Python version:
$ python3.6 -V
Python 3.6.5
While current versions of macOS (previously known as “Mac OS X”) include a version of Python 2, it is likely out of date by a few months. Also, this tutorial series uses Python 3, so let’s get you upgraded to that.
The best way we found to install Python 3 on macOS is through the Homebrew package manager. This approach is also recommended by community guides like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python.
To get started, you first want to install Homebrew:
At this point, you’re likely waiting for the command line developer tools to finish installing, and that’s going to take a few minutes. Time to grab a coffee or tea!
You can continue installing Homebrew and then Python after the command line developer tools installation is complete:
Whew! Now that the Homebrew package manager is set up, let’s continue on with installing Python 3 on your system.
Once Homebrew has finished installing, return to your terminal and run the following command:
$ brew install python3
Note: When you copy this command, be sure you don’t include the `` character at the beginning. That’s just an indicator that this is a console command.
This will download and install the latest version of Python. After the Homebrew brew install
command finishes, Python 3 should be installed on your system.
You can make sure everything went correctly by testing if Python can be accessed from the terminal:
pip3
and hit Enter.pip3
, go through the Python install steps again to make sure you have a working Python installation.Assuming everything went well and you saw the output from Pip in your command prompt window…congratulations! You just installed Python on your system, and you’re all set to continue with the next section in this tutorial.
The Pythonista app for iOS is a full-fledged Python development environment that you can run on your iPhone or iPad. It’s basically a combination of a Python editor, documentation, and interpreter rolled into one single app.
Pythonista is surprisingly fun to use. It’s a great little tool when you’re stuck without a laptop and want to work on your Python skills on the go. It comes with the complete Python 3 standard library and even includes full documentation you can browse offline.
To install and set up Pythonista you need to download it from the iOS app store.
If you have an Android tablet or phone and want to practice Python on the go, there are a several options available. The one that we found most reliably supports Python 3.6 is Pydroid 3.
Pydroid 3 features an interpreter you can use for REPL sessions, and it also provides the ability to edit, save, and execute Python code:
You can download and install Pydroid 3 from the Google Play store. There is a free version and also a paid Premium version which supports code prediction and code analysis.
This section provided you with the information you need to gain access to a Python 3 interpreter. You are now ready to head to the next section and begin interacting with Python!
#python #macos #linux #ios #ubuntu