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Fails to find environments after VScode updates #26013
Description
Almost every time VScode gets updated, the next time it gets launched, jupyter & related will fail to find Python environments from conda / mamba in newly launched jupyter interactive windows, until the window is reloaded manually (Developer: Reload Window), or until VScode is exited and launched again. Environments are still found on interactive windows that were left there from a previous session.
Note that this is in a setup that doesn't have the python environments extension installed.
Environment data
- VS Code version: has happened with multiple versions throughout the past couple months
- Jupyter Extension version (available under the Extensions sidebar): both latest and pre-release version associated with those
- Python Extension version (available under the Extensions sidebar): 1.37.2026061901
- OS (Windows | Mac | Linux distro) and version: Debian 12
- Python and/or Anaconda version: conda 24.11.3
- Type of virtual environment used (N/A | venv | virtualenv | conda | ...): conda
- Jupyter server running: Local
Steps to reproduce:
[NOTE: Self-contained, minimal reproducing code samples are extremely helpful and will expedite addressing your issue]
- Install VScode from maybe 3 months ago or so.
- Update to a newer VScode version.
- Launch VScode.
- Launch an interactive jupyter window.
- Try to find kernels from a conda installation.
Expected behaviour
Should find the kernels.
Actual behaviour
Finds only system python, until the next relaunch of VScode, or until the window is reloaded, or until the jupyter extension is reloaded.
Oddly, it didn't happen in the VScode that was released just today, but has happened consistently for several months of updates.
Logs
Output for Jupyter in the Output panel (View→Output, change the drop-down the upper-right of the Output panel to Jupyter)
XXX
Activity
eleanorjboyd commentedon Jul 2, 2026
Hello! We are now rolling out a new extension, the Python Environments extension, which we built to improve all environment related items for Python. Could you give this new extension a try and see if it fixes the issue for you? Info on how to enable it can be found here: microsoft/vscode-python-environments#581. Thanks!
david-cortes commentedon Jul 3, 2026
Thanks for the suggestion.
I am aware of this extension, and have it manually uninstalled because it causes worse issues like infinite loop crashes, high CPU usage, and inability to find some environments, among others; so I unfortunately cannot comment on whether it suffers from the same issue or not.
Nevertheless, the Python / Jupyter extensions are supposed to work without the PythonEvironments extension.
studyingegret commentedon Jul 11, 2026
Are you willing to share more details about this to the Python Environments extension? (I'm not using Jupyter so I cannot comment)
david-cortes commentedon Jul 11, 2026
These issues with the python environments extension are not always deterministically reproducible and/or might require concrete steps that I haven't pinned down yet. I unfortunately do not have sufficient know-how to provide useful logs and information, so unfortunately cannot provide full details.
b-math commentedon Jul 16, 2026
Hello,
I hope it is ok if I quickly join the conversation.
A teammate and I had a similar problem, that since about one month we couldn't select conda environments anymore for jupyter kernels. It possibly coincided with an update of vs-code.
For both of us the problem disappeared when deactivating the Python Environments extension mentioned above.
I am aware that this comment doesn't help david-cortes , but maybe for somebody else.
Best regards,
Barbara
khoroshyy commentedon Aug 11, 2026
Thanks. You saved my week.
simozacca commentedon Sep 14, 2026
Same here, echo above; I had this issue for weeks if not months of VSCode not finding conda pythong environments automatically like before. As soon as I disabled "Python Environments", everything got fixed right aways.