P.S.:

• I have been using Visual Studio Code for a while now and found an another way to show virtual environments in Visual Studio Code.

• Go to the parent folder in which venv is there through a command prompt.

• Type code . and Enter. [It is working on both Windows and Linux for me.]

• That should also show the virtual environments present in that folder.

Original Answer

I almost run into same problem every time I am working on Visual Studio Code using venv. I follow the below steps:

1. Go to menu File → Preferences → Settings.

2. Click on Workspace settings.

3. Under Files:Association, in the JSON: Schemas section, you will find Edit in settings.json. Click on that.

4. Update "python.pythonPath": "Your_venv_path/bin/python" under workspace settings.(For Windows): Update "python.pythonPath": "Your_venv_path/Scripts/python.exe" under workspace settings.

5. Restart Visual Studio Code in case if it still doesn't show your venv.

With a newer Visual Studio Code version it's quite simple.

Open Visual Studio Code in your project's folder.

Then open Python Terminal (Ctrl + Shift + P: Python: Create Terminal)

In the terminal:

python -m venv venv

You'll then see the following dialog:

Click Yes; and your venv is ready to go.

Open a new terminal within VSCode Ctrl + Shift + P and you'll see that venv is getting picked up; e.g.: (venv) ...

You can now instal packages as usual, e.g., pip install sklearn

To keep track of what is installed: pip freeze > requirements.txt

For the older versions of VSCode you may also need to do the following:

Then Python: Select Interpreter (via Ctrl + Shift + P)

And select the option (in my case towards the bottom)

Python 3.7 (venv)./venv/Scripts/python.exe

If you see

Activate.ps1 is not digitally signed. You cannot run this script on the current system.

you'll need to do the following: https://stackoverflow.com/a/18713789/2705777

For more information see: Global, virtual, and conda environments

Installing Modules

Ctrl + Shift + P and Terminal: Create New Integrated Terminal

from the terminal

Windows: .\.venv\Scripts\activate

Linux: .\.venv\bin\activate

You can now instal packages as usual, e.g., pip install sklearn.

For Jupyter, you need to do more - Jupyter notebooks in Visual Studio Code does not use the active virtual environment

I was having the same issue until I worked out that I was trying to make my project directory and the virtual environment one and the same - which isn't correct.

I have a \Code\Python directory where I store all my Python projects.My Python 3 installation is on my Path.

If I want to create a new Python project (Project1) with its own virtual environment, then I do this:

python -m venv Code\Python\Project1\venv

Then, simply opening the folder (Project1) in Visual Studio Code ensures that the correct virtual environment is used.