If you installed only one version of Python, open the command line and run python -V.
Verify if Python was successfully installed on Windows The latest Python 3 release has been installed on your computer. Then, in the next window, select Disable path length limit to avoid potential issues with long path names in the future: The installation process can take a few minutes. On the first pop-up window, select both checkboxes at the bottom to enable adding Python to your path in Windows automatically. Now you have the latest Python 2 release successfully installed.ĭownload installer for Python 3, and find it in your Downloads folder. Select at each step the following options:Īfter that, just confirm everything at each pop-up window to complete the installation. Run the downloaded executable file for Python 2 that you will find in your Downloads folder. It will cause no issues, and you will always be able to choose which Python version to work in.
Remember that, depending on your needs, you can install either one of them or both of them. Let’s follow this process step-by-step separately for Python 2 and Python 3.
To download the latest Python 3 release, you have to manually choose the installer that suits your Windows version: If you select the latest Python 2 release to download, choose Windows x86-64 MSI installer, which will identify your Windows version (32-bit or 64-bit) automatically: In such situations, You’ll need Python 2. Also, sometimes, you may want to use a Python package that hasn’t been updated in Python 3. For example, if some of your company’s projects are written in Python 2, which is incompatible with Python 3, you might have to run older scripts. However, in some cases, you may also need Python 2. You will most likely need only Python 3 if you’re going to work with new projects.
Hence, downloading the latest Python 3 release is generally the best choice if you aren’t certain which version to use. In contrast, Python 2 is no longer supported. In comparison to Python 2, Python 3 has a simpler and more intuitive syntax, it offers a wide range of useful libraries (especially for data science), and a large community of Python developers maintain it. Python 3 is a more recent version of Python released in 2008 and designed to fix the issues in Python 2. Later, we will discuss in more detail the technical steps of downloading and installing both Python 2 and Python 3, but first, let’s determine which of them (or both) you really need. Here you can choose whether to download Python 2 or Python 3 (or both). Open the Python Releases for Windows page, select Python version, and download Python executable installer If you see that Python isn’t installed, you can use the official Python website to install it. Install Python on Windows from the official Python website
If you found that Python is already installed on your computer and want to check the path of the installation, run where.exe python in the command line application. To do so, open the command line application Command Prompt (in Windows search, type cmd and press Enter) or Windows PowerShell (right-click on the Start button and select Windows PowerShell) and type there python -V. Check if Python is already installedīefore starting the installation process, we want to check if Python is already installed on your computer (e.g., by a previous user), and if so, which version of Python. Also, it is adapted for processing large amounts of data, easily working with different environments and applications, and managing the package versions. With Anaconda, you can choose to use the graphical user interface (GUI) instead of the command line. Essentially, Anaconda is a powerful data science platform that provides more than 1500 built-in Python and R data science packages - and also the most popular Python IDEs. If instead, your work is focused on data science and machine learning, then Anaconda is the best choice for you.
Choose the first option if you are a programmer using Python for various purposes: creating websites, network programming, developing software applications. There are two main ways of installing Python on Windows: installation from the official Python website or from Anaconda, a convenient distribution of Python and R programming languages. To start working with Python, we first need to download it and install it on our operating system (in this case, Windows). It’s intuitive, and it offers many helpful tools and libraries - Python is a powerful data science asset to have in your toolkit. Python is a popular open-source, high-level programming language. JanuTutorial: Installing Python on Windows