We’re excited to announce the August 2025 release of the Python, Pylance and Jupyter extensions for Visual Studio Code!

This release includes the following announcements:

• Python Environments extension rollout update
• Python shell integration support for Python 3.13 and above
• Enhanced terminal suggestions with documentation support
• Jupyter support for uv virtual environments

If you’re interested, you can check the full list of improvements in our changelogs for the Python, Jupyter and Pylance extensions.

Python Environments extension rollout update

The Python Environments extension continued to receive bug fixes and improvements as part of the controlled roll-out currently available to 20% of Stable users. To use the Python Environments extension during the roll-out, make sure the extension is installed and add the following to your VS Code settings.json file: "python.useEnvironmentsExtension": true. If you are experiencing issues with the extension, please report issues in our repo, and you can disable the extension by setting "python.useEnvironmentsExtension": false in your settings.json file.

As the Python environment manager ecosystem is evolving with new environment managers, new capabilities to existing environment managers, we want to make it easier for the community to get these newer features. This extension provides an API surface for extensions to integrate with the existing features of the Python Extension, this was asked for by the community that wanted to build newer features for their favorite environment managers.

This also helps us in a few ways:

• Extensions can be developed independently of the core python extension. This means they can ship at their own cadence. Issues and Features can be added to those extensions without waiting for a new release of the core extension.
• Helps us to concentrate on the core functionality of the Python Extension, while allowing the community to innovate and extend the functionality through their own extensions.

With that in mind, we ask each community to leverage our API interface to build tailored support for their tool of choice. Our team is committed to help enable and integrate these extensions, but we recognize we are not experts in each tool and cannot provide the best support for each. There are a number of published or work-in-progress extensions:

Python shell integration support for Python 3.13 and above

We now support shell integration for Python when using version 3.13 or later. This enhancement brings rich terminal features to Python REPLs, including better command detection, output parsing, and integration with VS Code’s terminal capabilities. When shell integration is enabled, PyREPL is automatically disabled to ensure compatibility and provide the best experience.

You can control this behavior through the Python shell integration setting, python.terminal.shellIntegration.enabled, in your VS Code settings.

Enhanced terminal suggestions with documentation support

Terminal suggestions powered by language servers now include inline documentation, similar to what you see in the editor. Starting with the Python REPL, you’ll get helpful descriptions and usage details for commands as you type, making it easier to discover and use Python functions and methods directly in the terminal.

To enable this feature, you’ll need these settings:

• "python.terminal.shellIntegration.enabled": true
• "python.analysis.supportAllPythonDocuments": true

We plan to enable these settings by default in future releases as we continue to refine the experience.

Jupyter support for uv virtual environments

We now support installing required dependencies when you run Jupyter Notebooks against a virtual environment created using uv. This enhancement makes it seamless to work with uv-managed environments in your Jupyter workflows, automatically handling package installation when needed.

Other Changes and Enhancements

We have also added small enhancements and fixed issues requested by users that should improve your experience working with Python and Jupyter Notebooks in Visual Studio Code. Some notable changes include:

• Enhanced chat and notebook integration with support for agent tools in notebook inline chat, improving the development experience when working with Jupyter notebooks.

We would also like to extend special thanks to this month’s contributors

• @Dhanika-Botejue Fixed grammar in macOS Python note in Quick Start in vscode-python#25235
• @Copilot Fixed skip-issue-check to support short issue references in vscode-python#25260
• @igorgaming Added __file__ variable to globals in exec() in vscode-python#25225
• @tgrue-openai Allow Activated Virtual Envs to Be Detected w/ a Workspace File in vscode-python#25141

Try out these new improvements by downloading the Python extension and the Jupyter extension from the Marketplace, or install them directly from the extensions view in Visual Studio Code (Ctrl + Shift + X or ⌘ + ⇧ + X). You can learn more about Python support in Visual Studio Code in the documentation. If you run into any problems or have suggestions, please file an issue on the Python VS Code GitHub page.