How to use pip on windows

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$ python --version
Python 3.N.N
$ python -m pip --version
pip X.Y.Z from ... (python 3.N.N)

$ python --version
Python 3.N.N
$ python -m pip --version
pip X.Y.Z from ... (python 3.N.N)

C:> py --version
Python 3.N.N
C:> py -m pip --version
pip X.Y.Z from ... (python 3.N.N)

$ python -m pip install sampleproject
[...]
Successfully installed sampleproject

$ python -m pip install sampleproject
[...]
Successfully installed sampleproject

C:> py -m pip install sampleproject
[...]
Successfully installed sampleproject

$ python -m pip install git+https://github.com/pypa/sampleproject.git@main
[...]
Successfully installed sampleproject

$ python -m pip install git+https://github.com/pypa/sampleproject.git@main
[...]
Successfully installed sampleproject

C:> py -m pip install git+https://github.com/pypa/sampleproject.git@main
[...]
Successfully installed sampleproject

$ python -m pip install sampleproject-1.0.tar.gz
[...]
Successfully installed sampleproject
$ python -m pip install sampleproject-1.0-py3-none-any.whl
[...]
Successfully installed sampleproject

$ python -m pip install sampleproject-1.0.tar.gz
[...]
Successfully installed sampleproject
$ python -m pip install sampleproject-1.0-py3-none-any.whl
[...]
Successfully installed sampleproject

C:> py -m pip install sampleproject-1.0.tar.gz
[...]
Successfully installed sampleproject
C:> py -m pip install sampleproject-1.0-py3-none-any.whl
[...]
Successfully installed sampleproject

$ python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
[...]
Successfully installed sampleproject

$ python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
[...]
Successfully installed sampleproject

C:> py -m pip install -r requirements.txt
[...]
Successfully installed sampleproject

$ python -m pip install --upgrade sampleproject
   [...]
Successfully installed sampleproject

$ python -m pip install --upgrade sampleproject
   [...]
Successfully installed sampleproject

C:> py -m pip install --upgrade sampleproject
   [...]
Successfully installed sampleproject

$ python -m pip uninstall sampleproject
Uninstalling sampleproject:
   [...]
Proceed (Y/n)? y
Successfully uninstalled sampleproject

$ python -m pip uninstall sampleproject
Uninstalling sampleproject:
   [...]
Proceed (Y/n)? y
Successfully uninstalled sampleproject

C:> py -m pip uninstall sampleproject
Uninstalling sampleproject:
   [...]
Proceed (Y/n)? y
Successfully uninstalled sampleproject

Introduction

PIP is a package management system used to install and manage software packages written in Python. It stands for “preferred installer program” or “Pip Installs Packages.”

PIP for Python is a utility to manage PyPI package installations from the command line.

If you are using an older version of Python on Windows, you may need to install PIP. You can easily install PIP on Windows by downloading the installation package, opening the command line, and launching the installer.

This tutorial will show how to install PIP on Windows, check its version, upgrade, and configure.

Prerequisites

• Computer running Windows or Windows server
• Access to the Command Prompt window

Before you start: Check if PIP is Already Installed

PIP is automatically installed with Python 2.7.9+ and Python 3.4+ and it comes with the virtualenv and pyvenv virtual environments.

Before you install PIP on Windows, check if PIP is already installed.

1. Launch the command prompt window:

• Press Windows Key + X.
• Click Run.
• Type in cmd.exe and hit enter.

Alternatively, type cmd in the Windows search bar and click the “Command Prompt” icon.

2. Type in the following command at the command prompt:

pip help

If PIP responds, then PIP is installed. Otherwise, there will be an error saying the program could not be found.

Installing PIP On Windows

Follow the steps outlined below to install PIP on Windows.

Step 1: Download PIP get-pip.py

Before installing PIP, download the get-pip.py file.

1. Launch a command prompt if it isn’t already open. To do so, open the Windows search bar, type cmd and click on the icon.

2. Then, run the following command to download the get-pip.py file:

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py

Step 2: Installing PIP on Windows

To install PIP type in the following:

python get-pip.py

If the file isn’t found, double-check the path to the folder where you saved the file. You can view the contents of your current directory using the following command:

dir

The dir command returns a full listing of the contents of a directory.

Step 3: Verify Installation

Once you’ve installed PIP, you can test whether the installation has been successful by typing the following:

pip help

If PIP has been installed, the program runs, and you should see the location of the software package and a list of commands you can use with pip.

If you receive an error, repeat the installation process.

Step 4: Add Pip to Windows Environment Variables

To run PIP from any location, you need to add it to Windows environment variables to avoid getting the «not on PATH» error. To do so, follow the steps outlined below:

1. Open the System and Security window by searching for it in the Control Plane.
2. Navigate to System settings.

1. Then, select Advanced system settings.

1. Open the Environment Variables and double-click on the Path variable in the System Variables.

1. Next, select New and add the directory where you installed PIP.
2. Click OK to save the changes.

Step 5: Configuration

In Windows, the PIP configuration file is %HOME%\pip\pip.ini.

There is also a legacy per-user configuration file. The file is located at %APPDATA%\pip\pip.ini.

You can set a custom path location for this config file using the environment variable PIP_CONFIG_FILE.

Upgrading PIP for Python on Windows

New versions of PIP are released occasionally. These versions may improve the functionality or be obligatory for security purposes.

To check the current version of PIP, run:

pip --version

To upgrade PIP on Windows, enter the following in the command prompt:

python -m pip install --upgrade pip

This command uninstalls the old version of PIP and then installs the most current version of PIP.

Downgrade PIP Version

Downgrading may be necessary if a new version of PIP starts performing undesirably. To downgrade PIP to a prior version, specifying the version you want.

To downgrade PIP, use the syntax:

python -m pip install pip==version_number

For example, to downgrade to version 18.1, you would run:

python -m pip install pip==18.1

You should now see the version of PIP that you specified.

Conclusion

Congratulations, you have installed PIP for Python on Windows. Check out our other guides to learn how to install PIP on other operating systems:

• Install PIP on CentOS
• Install PIP on Ubuntu
• Install PIP on Debian
• Install PIP on Mac

Now that you have PIP up and running, you are ready to manage your Python packages.

NumPy is a library for the Python programming language, adding support for large, multi-dimensional arrays and matrices. Check out our guide and learn how to install NumPy using PIP.

In this tutorial, we will identify PIP for Python, when we use it, how to install it, how to check its version, how to configure it on Windows, and how to upgrade (or downgrade) it.

What Is PIP for Python?

PIP stands for «PIP Installs Packages», which is a recursive acronym (the one that refers to itself) coined by its creator. In more practical terms, PIP is a widely used package-management system designed to install libraries that aren’t included in the standard distribution of the Python programming language on our local machine — and then manage them from the command line.

By default, PIP fetches such libraries from Python Package Index (PyPI), which is a central online repository containing a vast collection of third-party packages for various applications. If necessary, PIP can also connect to another local or online repository as long as it complies to PEP 503.

How to Install PIP on Windows

Before proceeding to PIP installation on Windows, we need to make sure that Python is already installed and PIP is not installed.

Check If Python Is Available

To verify that Python is available on our local machine, we need to open the command line (in Windows search, type cmd and press Enter to open Command Prompt or right-click on the Start button and select Windows PowerShell), type python, and press Enter.

If Python is properly installed, we will see a notification like the one below:

Python 3.10.2 (tags/v3.10.2:a58ebcc, Jan 17 2022, 14:12:15) [MSC v.1929 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32 Type "help," "copyright," "credits," or "license" for more information.

In the opposite case, we will see the following notification:

'python' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

This means that Python is either not installed on our local machine or is installed incorrectly and needs setting system variables. If you need further guidance on how to properly install Python on Windows, you can use this article in the Dataquest blog: Tutorial: Installing Python on Windows.

Check If PIP Is Already Installed

Now that we verified that Python is installed on Windows (or, if it was not, have installed it), let’s check if PIP is already installed on our system.

The latest releases Python 3.4+ and Python 2.7.9+, as well as the virtual environments virtualenv and pyvenv, automatically ship with PIP (we can check our Python version by running python --version or python -V in the command line). However, the older versions of Python don’t have this advantage by default. If we use an older Python release and cannot upgrade it for some reason (e.g., when we have to work with the projects made in old versions of Python incompatible with the newer versions), we may need to manually download and install PIP on Windows.

To check if PIP is already installed on Windows, we should open the command line again, type pip, and press Enter.

If PIP is installed, we will receive a long notification explaining the program usage, all the available commands and options. Otherwise, if PIP is not installed, the output will be:

'pip' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

This is exactly the case when we have to manually install PIP on Windows.

Download PIP

Before installing PIP, we have to download the get-pip.py file. We can do this two ways:

1. Go to https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py and save this file as get-pip.py in the same folder where Python is located.
   By default, the Python installation is stored in the folder AppData. The entire path could look like the following:

C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310

The folder User can be called differently on a particular machine, and also the final folder in the above path depends on the version of Python. In our case – Python 3.10:

1. Open the command line and navigate to the folder where Python is stored using the cd command (see the previous point if you are not sure about Python’s location).

Now, run the following curl command:

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py

Install PIP on Windows

Now that we downloaded the get-pip.py file, we need to complete the followings steps.

1. Open the command line
2. Navigate to the folder where Python and the get-pip.py file are stored using the cd command
3. Launch the installer by running the following command:

python get-pip.py

After a quick installation process, a message appears with all the details of the installation, and the final line appears as follows:

Successfully installed pip-22.0.1 wheel-0.37.1

PIP is now successfully installed on Windows.

Verify the PIP Installation Process and Check the PIP Version

To double-check if PIP has been installed properly and check its version, we need to run one of these commands in the command line:

pip --version

or

pip -V

If PIP is installed correctly, we will see a message indicating the version of PIP and its location on the local system, like the following:

pip 22.0.2 from C:\Users\Utente\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\site-packages\pip (python 3.10).

If instead, an error is thrown, it is necessary to repeat the installation process.

Add PIP to Windows Environment Variables

To be able to run PIP without issues from any folder in the command line (rather than navigating every time to the folder where the PIP installer is stored, as we did earlier), we have to add the path to the folder with the get-pip.py file to Windows environment variables. This is especially important in that rare case when, we have installed several versions of Python, including old ones. In this situation, to avoid installing PIP separately for each old version of Python, we should install it only for one of them and then perform the following steps:

• Open Control Panel (typing it in Windows search), select System and Security, then select System.
• Go to the end of the opened window and select Advanced system settings:

• Click Environment Variables:

• In the System variables section, find and double-click the variable Path:

• Click New and add the path to the folder where the PIP installer is stored:

• Click OK to confirm modifications.

Upgrade PIP on Windows

Sometimes, we may need to update PIP on Windows to the latest version to keep it up-to-date and working flawlessly. For this purpose, we can run the following command in the command line:

python -m pip install --upgrade pip

As a result, the old version of PIP will be uninstalled and the most recent release will be installed.

Downgrade PIP on Windows

We can also want to downgrade PIP to a specific older version. This operation may be necessary in certain cases, for example, if a new version works with some compatibility issues. To downgrade PIP on Windows, we need to open the command line and run a command with the following syntax:

python -m pip install pip==<version>

Let’s say, we want to downgrade it to v20.3. Then the exact command will be:
python -m pip install pip==20.3

After downgrading PIP, we can verify that we now have the necessary version of it by running python -V.

Conclusion

In this tutorial we covered various topics regarding the installation of PIP on Windows:

• How PIP works
• How to check if Python and PIP are already installed
• When it may be necessary to manually install PIP on Windows
• How to download and install PIP on Windows
• How to verify if PIP has been successfully installed and check its version
• How to configure PIP on Windows and when it may be necessary
• When and how to upgrade or downgrade PIP on Windows

Now that we have PIP properly installed on Windows, we can begin using it to manage Python libraries. Let’s start with running pip help in the command line and exploring the available commands and options for this program.

Prerequisite: Python Language Introduction

Before we start with how to install pip for Python on Windows, let’s first go through the basic introduction to Python. Python is a widely-used general-purpose, high-level programming language. Python is a programming language that lets you work quickly and integrate systems more efficiently. 

PIP is a package management system used to install and manage software packages/libraries written in Python. These files are stored in a large “online repository” termed as Python Package Index (PyPI). pip uses PyPI as the default source for packages and their dependencies. So whenever you type:

pip install package_name

pip will look for that package on PyPI and if found, it will download and install the package on your local system.

Check if Python is installed

Run the following command to test if python is installed or not. If not click here.

python --version

If it is installed, You will see something like this:

Python 3.10.0

Download and Install pip

The PIP can be downloaded and installed using the command line by going through the following steps:

Method 1: Using cURL in Python

Curl is a UNIX command that is used to send the PUT, GET, and POST requests to a URL. This tool is utilized for downloading files, testing REST APIs, etc.

Step 1: Open the cmd terminal 

Step 2: In python, a curl is a tool for transferring data requests to and from a server. Use the following command to request:

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py

python get-pip.py

Method 2: Manually install PIP on Windows

Pip must be manually installed on Windows. You might need to use the correct version of the file from pypa.io if you’re using an earlier version of Python or pip. Get the file and save it to a folder on your PC.

Step 1: Download the get-pip.py (https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py) file and store it in the same directory as python is installed.

Step 2: Change the current path of the directory in the command line to the path of the directory where the above file exists. 

Step 3: get-pip.py is a bootstrapping script that enables users to install pip in Python environments. Run the command given below:

python get-pip.py

Step 4: Now wait through the installation process. Voila! pip is now installed on your system.

Verification of the installation process

One can easily verify if the pip has been installed correctly by performing a version check on the same. Just go to the command line and execute the following command:

pip -V
or
pip --version

Adding PIP To Windows Environment Variables

If you are facing any path error then you can follow the following steps to add the pip to your PATH. You can follow the following steps to set the Path:

• Go to System and Security > System in the Control Panel once it has been opened.
• On the left side, click the Advanced system settings link.
• Then select Environment Variables.
• Double-click the PATH variable under System Variables.
• Click New, and add the directory where pip is installed, e.g. C:Python33Scripts, and select OK.

Upgrading Pip On Windows

pip can be upgraded using the following command.

python -m pip install -U pip

Downgrading Pip On Windows

It may happen sometimes that your pip current pip version is not supporting your current version of python or machine for that you can downgrade your pip version with the following command. 
Note: You can mention the version you want to install 

python -m pip install pip==17.0

Last Updated :
17 Apr, 2023

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