I tried to download pygame but it kept saying ” ‘pip’ is not recognized as an internal or externalcommand,
operable program or batch file.” Please help
This error does not mean that Pip is not installed. It only means that the Pip program is not on the PATH.
The exact wording that you show is specific to Windows. Windows installers for Python do not add Python, or Pip, to the PATH by default; you have to tell them to do so when you run the installer, by checking that box (or you can fix PATH yourself afterwards, or try “repairing” the installation from the Add/Remove Programs interface).
Pip is not only a program that comes with Python, but a piece of Python code that comes with Python. (The program works by starting a Python interpreter to run that code.) It’s usually recommended to use Python to run Pip; that also helps with managing multiple versions of Python on the same computer. On Windows, it’s necessary to do this when you use Pip to update itself (because Windows doesn’t let programs replace their own file on disk).
When you installed Python, it should have also given you a “launcher” program that lets you use py
on the command line to run Python. (This works because it is installed directly into your C:\Windows
folder, which is always on the PATH.)
You can use this to run Pip like so: py -m pip install pygame
.
I entered the code you game me ” py -m pip install pygame
.” but it just said “C:\Program Files\Python312\python.exe: No module named pip” and i did tick the two boxes in the bottom of the download launcher.
Exactly what steps did you take for the installation?
If you open an Explorer window and look at C:\Program Files\Python312
, do you see a Scripts
folder? If you do, what’s in there? How about site-packages
?