How to find all your Python installations on Windows (and Mac)

See Python: Tips and Tricks for similar articles.

If you have multiple Python installations on Windows and want to find them all, you can do so with the CMD command prompt or Powershell. Note that the searches can be quite long.

CMD

dir site.py /s

My results:

C:\>dir site.py /s
 Volume in drive C is OS
 Volume Serial Number is 4814-EF41

 Directory of C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Workbench 8.0 CE\python\lib

09/16/2017  07:38 PM            19,168 site.py
               1 File(s)         19,168 bytes

 Directory of C:\Users\ndunn\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python38\Lib

09/07/2020  11:16 PM            21,963 site.py
               1 File(s)         21,963 bytes

 Directory of C:\Users\ndunn\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\Lib

06/28/2021  04:06 PM            22,207 site.py
               1 File(s)         22,207 bytes

     Total Files Listed:
               3 File(s)         63,338 bytes
               0 Dir(s)  570,192,752,640 bytes free

Powershell

C:\> Get-ChildItem -Path C:\ -Filter site.py -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -Force

My results:

C:\> Get-ChildItem -Path C:\ -Filter site.py -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -Force

    Directory: C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Workbench 8.0 CE\python\lib

Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
-a---           9/16/2017  7:38 PM          19168 site.py

    Directory: C:\Users\ndunn\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python38\Lib

Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
-a---            9/7/2020 11:16 PM          21963 site.py

    Directory: C:\Users\ndunn\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\Lib

Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
-a---           6/28/2021  4:06 PM          22207 site.py

Mac

For Mac users, it’s:

ls -l /usr/bin/python*

Written by Nat Dunn. Follow Nat on Twitter.

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