Jupyter in Visual Studio Code shows "requires the pip, jupyter and notebook package" even though they are installed

Question

I’m trying to run a .ipynb notebook in VS Code with Python 3.11.0. I have already installed the Jupyter extension and Python extension in VS Code. Everything works fine when I run the same code as a .py file, but when I open the notebook and run a cell, VS Code keeps showing:

Running cells with 'Python 3.11.0' requires the pip, jupyter and notebook package.

Then if I click "Install", it says:

There is no pip installer available in the selected environment.

Image show VS Code fails to connect to the Python 3.11.0 kernel and incorrectly reports that pip/Jupyter packages are missing

I confirmed that I have pip, jupyter, and ipykernel installed.

Running these commands in CMD shows everything works:

python -m pip show pip
python -m jupyter notebook

(it opens normally in the browser)

The Python path in VS Code is the same as in CMD: C:\Program Files\Python311\python.exe.

Restarted VS Code and reinstalled the Python and Jupyter extensions.

Still, VS Code doesn’t detect pip or jupyter in that environment.

What I expected: Jupyter notebook cells in VS Code should run normally using my global Python 3.11.0 environment.

What actually happens: It keeps saying the environment doesn’t have pip/jupyter, and stays "Connecting to kernel..." forever.

• Brentspine: The image seems to be very low quality

Answer 1

This issue happens when VS Code can’t detect pip or Jupyter inside a Python installation located under C:\Program Files.
Even if pip works fine from CMD, VS Code’s environment isolation prevents it from seeing user-installed packages.

There’s a detailed explanation and fix here:
🔗 VS Code: There is no pip installer available in the selected environment

In short:

• Either reinstall Python for your user (not system-wide), or

• Add your user site-packages path manually so VS Code can see them.

That thread covers both approaches step-by-step.

• Soren V. Raben: Check here: stackoverflow.com/q/79789445/11485896

Answer 2

I had exactly the same problem. Please check here. In short, I think that the core of this problem was with either version 202590 Jupyter extension for VSCode or version 7.0.0 of ipykernel (or both). Those two have been recently updated. Right now I work on Jupyter extension 2025年9月1日 and ipykernel 7.0.1 and haven't noticed any problems.