winget install Python

To install Python with winget, you can use the following command:

winget install -e --id Python.Python.3.11 --scope machine

This command says "Install the app with the exact id Python.Python.3.11 for all users on the machine."

To check that the installation was successful, enter python into a new command prompt. This should start the Python interpreter.

Installing other Python versions

The command above installs Python 3.11. To see which other versions are available, you can use:

winget search --id Python.Python

This gives:

Name        Id                 Version   Source
------------------------------------------------
Python 2    Python.Python.2    2.7.18150 winget
Python 3    Python.Python.3.0  3.0.1     winget
Python 3    Python.Python.3.1  3.1.4     winget
Python 3    Python.Python.3.2  3.2.5     winget
Python 3    Python.Python.3.3  3.3.5     winget
Python 3    Python.Python.3.4  3.4.4     winget
Python 3    Python.Python.3.5  3.5.4     winget
Python 3    Python.Python.3.6  3.6.8     winget
Python 3    Python.Python.3.7  3.7.9     winget
Python 3    Python.Python.3.8  3.8.10    winget
Python 3    Python.Python.3.9  3.9.13    winget
Python 3.10 Python.Python.3.10 3.10.11   winget
Python 3.11 Python.Python.3.11 3.11.4    winget
Python 3.12 Python.Python.3.12 3.12.0b4  winget

The suffix 0b4 in version 3.12 indicates a beta version.

As another example from the table, we can install Python 3.9 with the command:

winget install -e --id Python.Python.3.9 --scope machine

Install location

Because we passed the flag --scope machine above, Python was installed for all users. In our specific examples, its installation directories are C:\Program Files\Python311 and C:\Program Files\Python39, respectively. If we had not passed the flag, then Python would have been installed for the current user only. In this case, the installation directories would have been C:\Users\<YourUser>\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python311, etc.

It is possible to customize the install location with the --location flag:

winget install -e --id Python.Python.3.11 --location C:\Python311

This installs Python into C:\Python311.

Python 2

We can see from the above table that it's also possible to install Python 2 with winget:

winget install -e --id Python.Python.2

It doesn't matter whether we pass --scope machine here because this always performs a system-wide installation. The installation directory is C:\Python27.

The PATH environment variable

The Python 3 installers add Python to the PATH environment variable. This lets us write python in a (new) command prompt window to launch the interpreter. Python 2 does not add itself to the PATH.

Multiple Python versions