Installing Python

If Python is already installed on your system, uv will detect and use it without configuration. However, uv can also install and manage Python versions for you.

Tip

uv will automatically fetch Python versions as needed — you don't need to install Python to get started.

Getting started

To install the latest Python version:

$ uv python install

This will install a uv-managed Python version even if there is already a Python installation on your system. If you've previously installed Python with uv, a new version will not be installed.

Note

Python does not publish official distributable binaries. As such, uv uses third-party distributions from the python-build-standalone project. The project is partially maintained by the uv maintainers and is used by other prominent Python projects (e.g., Rye, Bazel). See the Python distributions documentation for more details.

Once Python is installed, it will be used by uv commands automatically.

Important

When Python is installed by uv, it will not be available globally (i.e. via the python command). Support for this feature is planned for a future release. In the meantime, use uv run or create and activate a virtual environment to use python directly.

Installing a specific version

To install a specific Python version:

$ uv python install 3.12

To install multiple Python versions:

$ uv python install 3.11 3.12

To install an alternative Python implementation, e.g. PyPy:

$ uv python install [email protected]

See the python install documentation for more details.

Viewing Python installations

To view available and installed Python versions:

$ uv python list

See the python list documentation for more details.

Automatic Python downloads

Note that Python does not need to be explicitly installed to use uv. By default, uv will automatically download Python versions when they are required. For example, the following would download Python 3.12 if it was not installed:

$ uv run --python 3.12 python -c 'print("hello world")'

Even if a specific Python version is not requested, uv will download the latest version on demand. For example, the following will create a new virtual environment and download a managed Python version if Python is not found:

$ uv venv

Tip

Automatic Python downloads can be easily disabled if you want more control over when Python is downloaded.

Using an existing Python installation

uv will use existing Python installations if present on your system. There is no configuration necessary for this behavior: uv will use the system Python if it satisfies the requirements of the command invocation. See the Python discovery documentation for details.

To force uv to use the system Python, provide the --python-preference only-system option. See the Python version preference documentation for more details.

Next steps

To learn more about uv python, see the Python version concept page and the command reference.

Or, read on to learn how to run scripts and invoke Python with uv.