You can override this behavior, but only when you first create a virtual environment. If you pass the flag --system-site-packages to venv when you run it, the created venv will have access to the parent Python’s package directory.
Using Python virtual environments with Jupyter notebooks
If you’re using Jupyter notebooks (aka IPython notebooks), and you already have Jupyter installed systemwide, create your virtual environment and activate it. Then, from your virtual environment directory, run pip install ipykernel to add the needed components for IPython. Finally, run ipython kernel install —user —name=, where project_name is a name you want to associate with that particular project. From there you should be able to launch Jupyter and switch to the IPython kernel you installed inside the virtual environment.
Upgrading Python virtual environments
When you upgrade a Python runtime on your system, virtual environments that use that version of Python aren’t automatically upgraded. That’s your responsibility. And that’s by design, because unwitting upgrades to Python versions can break their attendant packages.
If you’ve upgraded an existing Python interpreter with a minor point upgrade—e.g., from Python 3.13.1 to Python 3.13.3—you can upgrade any corresponding virtual environments easily enough. From a command prompt in the project directory, enter:
python -m venv /path/to/venv --upgradeDon’t activate the virtual environment beforehand, or the upgrade may not work.
Alternatively, as noted above (see “Removing the Python virtual environment”), you could elect to remove the venv completely and recreate it using your requirements.txt or pyproject.toml file.
If you’ve installed a major new version of Python—e.g., you already have Python 3.10 and you now install Python 3.11 alongside it—you’ll need to create a new virtual environment that specifically uses the new major point version. Do not attempt to upgrade an existing virtual environment to a higher major point version of Python.
