PyScripter

In Memoriam: Kiriakos Vlahos

2026-01-04T07:55:00.000-08:00

With great regret, we write to inform the community of the passing of the founder and main developer of PyScripter, Kiriakos Vlahos.

PyScripter was his passion project. He loved working on new features and interacting with users, whether by fixing reported bugs or discussing the project and its future.

We will look into finding a successor to continue the project and will share an update if and when we have more news.

Thank you for supporting PyScripter,

Daphne and Filippos
(Kiriakos’s children)

PyScripter v5.3.1 released

2025-11-19T19:43:00.000-08:00

PyScripter v5.3.1 is now available at Sourceforge. This is a bug fix release. A regression in v5.3.0 and a couple of more bugs have been fixed.

New features:

Turkish translation added

Issues addressed:

#1444, #1448, #1484

PyScripter v5.3.0 released

2025-11-11T09:56:00.000-08:00

PyScripter v5.3.0 is now available at Sourceforge. There are exciting new features in this release, such as the integrated code diagnostics with automated quick fixes, the refactoring support. and the built-in code formatter. Projects have also received a facelift with the support for auto-updating folders, which was a long standing request.

New features:

Code diagnostics using ruff a very fast linter and language server
File Check, with issues shown in the editor
Fixable issues flagged in the gutter
Quick Fix or Ignore fixable found issues
Fix all command
Refactoring support: Organize Imports, rename, extract variable, extract function, inline
Built-in code formatting (Edit, Source Code, Format)
Added auto-refreshing project folders that mirror physical folders (#521)
Scrollbar annotation for highlighted search term

Issues addressed:

#1407, #1409, #1411, #1418, #1419, #1436, #1438

Feature Preview: Refactoring

2025-10-18T04:36:00.000-07:00

The upcoming version of PyScripter introduces refactoring support, including the following refactorings:

Organize imports
Rename (shortcut: F2)
Extract variable
Extract function
Inline

The video below showcases the refactoring features of PyScripter.

Feature Preview: Code checks and quick fixes

2025-10-11T15:43:00.000-07:00

The next version of PyScripter provides an integration with Ruff, an "extremely fast Python linter and code formatter". With the help of Ruff, PyScripter analyses your code, finds errors and provides warnings and hints. Many of the errors and warnings can be fixed automatically as shown in this short video.

Feature preview: File-system project folders

2025-09-16T08:33:00.000-07:00

The next version of PyScripter will add file-system project folders, a much requested feature. In PyScripter Project Explorer you will be able to use two types of file folders:

Virtual folders: These folders allow you to organize your project files in a logical manner. For example you can have a folder for source files, another one for documentation files and another one for configuration files. These folders are just collections of files and not necessarily correspond to physical folders on disk. They may contain subfolders. You can create virtual folders using the Add commands of the folder context menu. This is what we currently have in PyScripter.
File-system folders: These folders mirror the directory structure on disk. Their content reflects the content of the physical folders and they are auto-updating when the contents of the folders on disk change, e.g. when files are added, deleted or renamed. They are created using the Import Directory folder context menu. They may also contain subfolders.

The Project Explorer uses different icons to distinguish between these two types of folder nodes. For example in the picture below, "Doc" is a virtual folder and "rpyc" a file-system one.

The updated "Import Directory" dialog box

This dialog box is accessible from the folder context menu. It allows you to import a directory into the project. In the file masks field, you can provide one or more masks separated by semi-colon that determines which file types will be imported into the project. If "Recursive" is checked subfolders will be imported too. If "Auto-update" is checked then a file-system folder will be created that will automatically refresh, whenever a change in the specified directory takes place. Otherwise, a virtual folder will be created. Finally, you have the option to add the specified directory to the project's "Extra Python Path", so that the python interpreter can find and import modules in this directory.

Turning your python script into an executable the easy way

2025-05-21T05:58:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you may want to convert your python script into a self-contained executable. The best tool for this job is PyInstaller, The PyScripter External Tools can simplify the process.

First you need to install PyInstaller, using the menu Tools, Tools, Install packages with pip:

Then you need to create an External Tool that uses PyInstaller to convert the active script into an executable. Use the menu Tools, Configure Tools... and then press Add. Configure the external tools as shown below:

With the above, all it takes to convert your script into an executable is to invoke the menu Tools, Tools, Create executable. Your executable can then be found in a subfolder of your script's folder called "dist".

If you want to learn more about external tools, consult the help file using Help, PyScripter, External Tools and Help, PyScripter, Parameters.

PyScripter v5.2.3 released

2025-05-10T04:47:00.000-07:00

PyScripter v5.2.3 is now available at Sourceforge. This is mainly a bug fix release.

New features:

Turkish translation added

Issues addressed:

#1382, #1392, #1397, #1401

PyScripter v5.2.2 released

2025-04-13T14:28:00.000-07:00

PyScripter v5.2.2 is now available at Sourceforge. The main new feature is the support for Grok 3, which is one of the best Large Language Models available. The reasoning variant (grok-3-mini) is also supported.

New features:

Support for Grok LLM
New editor commands Next/Previous change (Shft+Ctrl+Num+/-)
IDE option to enable/disable editor accessibility support

Issues addressed:

#1367, #1369, #1372, #1373, #1374, #1375

Using QGIS - Update

2025-02-27T03:24:00.000-08:00

QGIS is a widely used, free and open source, GIS software package. This is an update on how to use it with PyScripter. I have used the currently latest version for Windows (3.42) but you can adapt the instructions to other recent versions of QGIS.

Create a command file "PyScripter-QGIS.cmd" with the following content:

@echo off
rem Adapt the following line to match your installation
set QGIS_ROOT=C:\Program Files\QGIS 3.42.0
call "%QGIS_ROOT%\bin\o4w_env.bat"
path %OSGEO4W_ROOT%\apps\qgis\bin;%PATH%
@echo on
rem Set VSI cache to be used as buffer, see #6448
set VSI_CACHE=TRUE
set VSI_CACHE_SIZE=1000000
set GDAL_FILENAME_IS_UTF8=YES
set QT_PLUGIN_PATH=%OSGEO4W_ROOT%\apps\qgis\qtplugins;%OSGEO4W_ROOT%\apps\qt5\plugins
set PYTHONPATH=%QGIS_ROOT%\apps\qgis\python;%PYTHONPATH%
pushd "c:\Program Files\PyScripter"
rem Adapt the following line to match the python version that comes with QGIS
start "PyScripter" /B "PyScripter.exe" --PYTHON312 --PYTHONDLLPATH="%QGIS_ROOT%\apps\Python312"
popd

Save it anywhere you want and run it.

Then in the PyScripter python interpreter you can do:

*** Python 3.12.9 (main, Feb  7 2025, 14:34:44) [MSC v.1938 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32. ***
*** Remote Python engine is active ***
>>> from qgis.core import *
>>> import qgis.utils
>>> from PyQt5.QtCore import QSettings
>>>

That's it.

PyScripter v5.2.1 released

2025-02-09T18:43:00.000-08:00

PyScripter v5.2.1 is now available at Sourceforge. This release brings a number of significant improvements in the areas of LLM-Assisted coding and Debugging. This is the list of the main new features and fixes:

New Features:

LLM Support improvements

Added support for DeepSeek LLM
Added support for DeepSeek and OpenAI "o" LLM reasoning models
Improved display of LLM output
Syntax Highligting for 300 languges
Exposed the temperature LLM parameter
Printing of LLM output

Debugging

Much faster debugging for python >= 3.13
Debugging improvements for python >= 3.10
Added support for breakpoint ignore counts

Surround editor selection with brackets and quotes
Added two new styles: Windows11 MineShaft (new default) and Windows 11 Impressive Light

Issues addressed:

#1347

DeepSeek and Other improvements to LLM-Assisted Coding

2025-02-09T12:49:00.000-08:00

The forthcoming version of PyScripter has a number of improvements to LLL-assisted coding:

Support for DeepSeek

When it comes to coding, DeepSeek is simply amazing. It is now supported both in the Chat and Assistant.

The rendering of the LLM responses is much improved and it is now on a par with the Web interface of the LLM providers.

Code is presented in code boxes, and using the icons in the header, you can copy the code into the clipboard or directly into a new editor.

Markdown is now rendered perfectly:

Support for DeepSeek and OpenAI LLM reasoning models

You can now follow the reasoning behind the answers, using DeepSeek's deepseek-reasoner model or OpenAI's "o" models, such o1-mini. The reasoning is presented without cluttering the output.

Other improvements

The temperature LLM model parameter is exposed by the Chat UI. It is a decimal number between 0 and 2 that controls the randomness of the results (higher values leed to more random answers).

You can now print the chat topic content.

Syntax highlighting for about 300 programming languages is available. So you can now ask questions not just about python but also for other languages.

And don't forget the Assistant. While coding Assistant completion is available by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Space. as well as by using the editor context menu.

Breakpoint conditions and ignore counts

2025-01-30T08:51:00.000-08:00

PyScripter has always supported conditional breakpoints. Conditional breakpoints allow you to finetune the debugging experience, by only stopping execution when certain conditions are met.

Consider the following example:

def main():
    sum = 0
    for i in range(1000):
        sum = sum + i
    print(sum)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Say you are interested to know when sum becomes >= 1000. If you set a breakpoint at the 4th line of the code, it will be tedious and time consuming to reach that point. What you can do is to set a conditional breakpoint:

When you debug the code, execution will stop at the break point only when the condition is met (i = 46).

As you can tell from the screenshot above, the forthcoming version of PyScripter, introduces and new breakpoint property "Ignore Count". If you set the the Ignore Count to a positive integer value, then the breakpoint will be ignored a number of times equal to that value. So in the above example if you remove the condition and set the Ignore Count to 100, execution will stop when i becomes 100. When you resume execution, the breakpoint will be ignored another 100 times.

There are a few ways to set the breakpoint properties Condition and Ignore Count.

In the Breakpoints Window select the property you want to change and press F2. This will allow you to edit the property directly. Press Enter when you are done:

In the Breakpoints Window right-click on the breakpoint and select "Breakpoint Properties...". A dialog box like the following pops up and you can edit the values.

In the editor, when you click on a breakpoint you get a context menu (new feature) from which you can select "Breakpoint Properties..."

Another breakpoint tip:

You can quickly disable/enable a breakpoint by Ctrl + clicking on it in the editor gutter.

Teaser: Super fast debugging is coming to PyScripter

2025-01-18T15:08:00.000-08:00

You expect code to run with debugging much slower than without. Indeed this is the case and with python, debugging can be sometimes painfully slow.

A relatively recent, low-level feature that was introduces in Python 3.12 is monitoring. Monitoring allows programmers to hook into low level events that occur during the execution of code. This is similar to tracing, which is used by debuggers, but with much greater granularity and control. It turns out that monitoring can help make faster debuggers. Much faster. The next version of PyScripter will include a new debugger that is based on monitoring for python versions 3.12+. Just to give you a taste of the speed-up you get, consider the following code:

import time


def test():
    start_time = time.time()
    for i in range(1000):
        for j in range(1000):
            j + i
    cost = time.time() - start_time
    print("Elapsed time: ", cost)
    f(0)


def f(x):
    # Set breakpoint here
    x *= 2
    return x + 1


test()

If you set a break point at the line "f(0)" and start debugging, this is what you get with the PyScripter v5.1.4 and python 3.13.

*** Remote Interpreter Reinitialized ***
Elapsed time:  2.5882363319396973
[Dbg]>>> 

There are a million iterations that happen before you reach the breakpoint, so this takes about 2.5 seconds. If you do the same with the forthcoming release of PyScripter you get:

*** Remote Interpreter Reinitialized ***
Elapsed time:  0.016160964965820312
[Dbg]>>> 

This is more than x150 speed-up. The code until you reach the breakpoint, runs almost as fast as without debugging. The new debugger shines when you debug over loops or other pieces of code that it is executed repetitively. For other types of code the speedup is not as impressive.

The new release also back-ports some debugging improvements introduced in python 3.14 to python versions 3.10+. So users of these versions will experience faster debugging.

PyScripter v5.1.3 released

2025-01-07T06:42:00.001-08:00

PyScripter v5.1.3 is now available at Sourceforge. Despite being a minor release it does include a number of new features and improvements:

Support for Python 3.14
Support for free-threaded python
New external tool "Create venv"
Support tqdm and similar modules in the interactive interpreter (#812)
The Chat Window renders Markdown
The Assistant can use a greater variety of Ollama models
Layouts now include the secondary workspace status (#494)

Create virtual environments the easy way

2024-12-13T08:30:00.001-08:00

A powerful and possibly underused feature or PyScripter is the Externa Tools. A collection of such tools is included with the installation, but you can create your own.

Virtual python environments are isolated workspaces, that allow you to install packages and test code, without messing up the main python installation. After using them for a specific purpose you can just delete them. Python ships with a module called venv, that allows you to easily create such virtual environments.

Instead of creating such environments from the command prompt you can create an external tool to do that. You can can create new external tools using Tools, Configure Tools, Add. You can then fill the information as in the image below.

You can run the created tool by selecting it from the Tools, Tools menu. It will prompt you for a folder in which the virtual environment will be created and then will create the environment. To use the created environment, you then go to Run, Python Versions, Setup Python Versions..., add a new unregistered python version at the new virtual environment folder and activate it.

If you are using Conda python distributions you can create an external tool to create conda virtual environments instead. Note though, that conda virtual environments are much more heavyweight than the venv ones.

The next release of PyScripter will add such an external tool to new installations and you can easily add it to existing installations.

Free-threaded python support is coming to PyScripter

2024-12-12T18:23:00.001-08:00

One of the main limitations of Python has been its inability to make use of the multiple cores of modern CPUs, at least not easily. This is due to the infamous Global Interpreter Lock. In essence, due to the presence of the GIL, only one python thread can execute at a time,

Python 3.13 has changed this and provides an experimental free-threaded (or No-GIL) version. It is included in the standard installer, but you need to select the relevant option (see below) to install it.

What you get is a another python executable called python3.13t.exe alongside python.exe. This executable runs the free-threaded version of python.

This RealPython article provides an in-depth coverage of free-threaded python and is recommended reading. .

The next version of PyScripter will include support for free-treaded Python. The Run, Python Engine submenu now includes an option to use the Free-Threaded version if is available. It also allows you to easily switch between the standard and free-threaded version.

To get an idea of the performance benefits from using free-threaded python, here are the the results of running the benchmark code of the RealPython article without/with free-threading:

*** Python 3.13.0 (tags/v3.13.0:60403a5, Oct  7 2024, 09:38:07) [MSC v.1941 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32. ***
>>> =======================================================================
💻 Windows 64bit with 20x CPU cores (Intel64 Family 6 Model 151 Stepping 2, GenuineIntel Little Endian)

🐍 CPython 3.13.0 C:\Python\Python313\python.exe

Free Threading: unsupported

=======================================================================

Running 20 threads...   : 15.07s

*** Python 3.13.0 experimental free-threading build (tags/v3.13.0*** Remote Interpreter Reinitialized ***
=======================================================================

💻 Windows 64bit with 20x CPU cores (Intel64 Family 6 Model 151 Stepping 2, GenuineIntel Little Endian)

🐍 CPython 3.13.0 C:\Python\Python313\python3.13t.exe

Free Threading: enabled ✨

========================================================================

Running 20 threads...   : 2.81s

SSH Engines broken by November 12, 2024 Windows update

2024-11-21T19:14:00.001-08:00

If you are using SSH engines that rely on OpenSSH (and not PuTTY), you may find that they stopped working after the November 23 Windows 11 update. The reason is that OpenSSH has been updated to version 9.5 and this affects how the scp command works. It now uses the SFTP mode by default and it breaks compatibility with earlier versions.

To fix this, you need to edit the settings of your ssh engine and add a new option –O to the scp command options. This options instructs scp to work in a backward compatible manner. With this change you will find that your SSH engines work as before the update.

PyScripter v5.1.0 released

2024-10-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

PyScripter v5.1.0 is now available at Sourceforge. This release features very significant improvements in the PyScripter editor.

New Features

Issues addressed

#1307, #1321, #1329, #1336

Teaser: Colored highlight of program structure is coming to PyScripter

2024-10-26T19:20:00.000-07:00

The PyScripter editor had the option to show indentation guides (thin vertical lines that help you visualize blocks of python code). This feature has been enhanced and it is now using colors to help you better understand the python code structure. See the picture below:

The option is enabled by the default. You can disable by unchecking the option using Tools, Options, IDE Options, Editor, "Indentation Guides", "Highlight Structure".

Teaser: Display of program flow control symbols is coming to PyScripter

2024-10-26T18:51:00.000-07:00

The next version of PyScripter will be able to display program flow control symbols (small arrows next to return/continue/break/yield statements), that help you visualize and better understand the flow of execution:

See the picture below:

You can enable/disable this feature through, Tools, Options, IDE Options, Editor, "Display flow control symbols". You can also customize their color.

Teaser: Annotated scrollbars are coming to PyScripter

2024-10-23T14:20:00.000-07:00

In this screenshot you can see in the scrollbar:

the position of the multiple carets (full blueish line)
lines with errors (full red line)
the position of the bookmarks (mini bluish marks on the left)
line modification info (on the right side)
alpha-blended slider

PyScripter on Windows 7

2024-10-16T10:09:00.001-07:00

Windows 7 share of the Windows market is under 3% and declining.Microsoft stopped support for Win 7 on January 2020. Python no longer supports Win7 since version 3.9. However there are still quite a few PyScripter users on Win 7.

I recently got an issue report that the latest versions 5.x do not paint well on Windows 7. The problem was resolved when the user activated an Aero theme instead of a classic one. So, if you are on Windows 7 and want to use PyScripter you still can.

If you have trouble activating an Aero theme please have a look a this troubleshooting guide.

Teaser: Multi-caret editing is coming to PyScripter

2024-10-10T08:22:00.000-07:00

The series of short videos that follow, introduce the forthcoming new multi-caret and multi-selection editing capabilities of PyScripter. They can also serve as a tutorial on how to effectively use them for more productive code editing.

Multiple carets and selections using the mouse

Takeaways:

Alt + Mouse click: Adds new caret
Alt + Mouse move: Adds new selection
Alt + Shift + Mouse click/move: Selects column mode

Multiple carets and selections using the keyboard

Takeaways:

Alt + Shift + Left/Right/Up/Down/PgUp/PgDown: Selects column mode
Alt + End: Adds carets to the end of the lines in the current selection

Editing with multiple carets and selections

Takeaways:

Most editing commands work with multiple carets and selections

Copying and pasting with multiple selections

Takeaways:

If the number of carets when you copy, is equal to the number of carets when you paste, copying is taking place on a one-to-one basis. Otherwise, the full selected text is copied.

Selecting matching words and text

Takeaways:

Ctrl + W: Adds the next matching word as a new selection
Shift +Ctrl + W: Selects all matching occurrences of the current selection

PyScripter v5.0.1 released

2024-09-10T09:59:00.001-07:00

PyScripter v5.0.1 is now available at Sourceforge. Google’s Gemini LLM has been added to the list of supported LLM service providers. Low usage of Gemini is free, so this makes it a great choice for working with PyScripter’s LLM-assisted coding. See this wiki page to get started.

New features:
- Support for Google's Gemini LLM
Issues addressed:
- #1227, #1271, #1319