PyCharm 2021.1 Help

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PyCharm is a dedicated Python Integrated Development Environment (IDE) providing a wide range of essential tools for Python developers, tightly integrated to create a convenient environment for productive Python, web, and data science development.

Choose the best PyCharm for you

PyCharm is available in three editions:

  • Community (free and open-sourced): for smart and intelligent Python development, including code assistance, refactorings, visual debugging, and version control integration.

  • Professional(paid) : for professional Python, web, and data science development, including code assistance, refactorings, visual debugging, version control integration, remote configurations, deployment, support for popular web frameworks, such as Django and Flask, database support, scientific tools (including Jupyter notebook support), big data tools.

  • Edu (free and open-sourced): for learning programming languages and related technologies with integrated educational tools.

For details, see the editions comparison matrix.

Supported languages

To start developing in Python with PyCharm you need to download and install Python from python.org depending on your platform.

PyCharm supports the following versions of Python:

  • Python 2: version 2.7

  • Python 3: from the version 3.6 up to the version 3.10

Besides, in the Professional edition, one can develop Django, Flask, and Pyramid applications. Also, it fully supports HTML (including HTML5), CSS, JavaScript, and XML: these languages are bundled in the IDE via plugins and are switched on for you by default. Support for the other languages and frameworks can also be added via plugins (go to Settings | Plugins or PyCharm | Preferences | Plugins for macOS users, to find out more or set them up during the first IDE launch).

Supported platforms

PyCharm is a cross-platform IDE that works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Check the system requirements:

RequirementMinimumRecommended
RAM4 GB of free RAM8 GB of total system RAM
CPUAny modern CPUMulti-core CPU. PyCharm supports multithreading for different operations and processes making it faster the more CPU cores it can use.
Disk space2.5 GB and another 1 GB for cachesSSD drive with at least 5 GB of free space
Monitor resolution1024x7681920×1080
Operating system

Officially released 64-bit versions of the following:

  • Microsoft Windows 8 or later

  • macOS 10.13 or later

  • Any Linux distribution that supports Gnome, KDE, or Unity DE. PyCharm is not available for some Linux distributions, such as RHEL6 or CentOS6, that do not include GLIBC 2.14 or later.

Pre-release versions are not supported.

Latest 64-bit version of Windows, macOS, or Linux (for example, Debian, Ubuntu, or RHEL)

You can install PyCharm using Toolbox or standalone installations. If you need assistance installing PyCharm, see the installation instructions: Install PyCharm

Start with a project in PyCharm

Everything you do in PyCharm, you do within the context of a project. It serves as a basis for coding assistance, bulk refactoring, coding style consistency, and so on. You have three options to start working on a project inside the IDE:

Open an existing project

Begin by opening one of your existing projects stored on your computer. You can select one in the list of the recent projects on the Welcome screen or click Open:

Welcome screen

Otherwise, you can create a project for your existing source files. Select the command Open on the File menu, and specify the directory where the sources exist. PyCharm will then create a project from your sources for you. Refer to the section Importing Project from Existing Source Code for details.

Check out an existing project from Version Control

You can also download sources from a VCS storage or repository. Choose Git (GitHub), Mercurial, Subversion, Perforce (supported in Professional edition only), and then enter your credentials to access the storage.

Then, enter a path to the sources and clone the repository to the local host:

Clone a repository

Refer to the section Version control for details.

Create a new project

To create a project, do one of the following:

  • From the main menu, choose File | New Project

  • On the Welcome screen, click New Project

In PyCharm Community, you can create only Python projects, whereas, with PyCharm Professional, you have a variety of options to create a web framework project.

Creating a new project

Creating a PyCharm helps implement new project

See more details in Create a Python project.

When creating a new project, you need to specify a Python interpreter to execute Python code in your project. You need at least one Python installation to be available on your machine.

For a new project, PyCharm creates an isolated virtual environment: venv, pipenv, or Conda. As you work, you can change it or create new interpreters. You can also quickly preview packages installed for your interpreters and add new packages in the Python Package tool window.

Python Package tool window

For more details see Configure a Python interpreter.

Look around

When you launch PyCharm for the very first time, or when there are no open projects, you see the Welcome screen. It gives you the main entry points into the IDE: creating or opening a project, checking out a project from version control, viewing documentation, and configuring the IDE.

When a project is opened, you see the main window divided into several logical areas. Let’s take a moment to see the key UI elements here:

The Main window
  1. Project tool window on the left side displays your project files.

  2. Editor on the right side, where you actually write your code. It has tabs for easy navigation between open files.

  3. Navigation bar above the editor additionally allows you to quickly run and debug your application as well as do the basic VCS actions.

  4. Gutter, the vertical stripe next to the editor, shows the breakpoints you have, and provides a convenient way to navigate through the code hierarchy like going to definition/declaration. It also shows line numbers and per-line VCS history.

  5. Scrollbar, on the right side of the editor. PyCharm constantly monitors the quality of your code and always shows the results of its code inspections in the gutter: errors, warnings, and so on. The indicator in the top right-hand corner shows the overall status of code inspections for the entire file.

  6. Tool windows are specialized windows attached to the bottom and sides of the workspace and provide access to typical tasks such as project management, source code search and navigation, integration with version control systems, and so on.

  7. The status bar indicates the status of your project and the entire IDE, and shows various warnings and information messages like file encoding, line separator, inspection profile, and so on. It also provides quick access to the Python interpreter settings.

Also, in the bottom-left corner of the PyCharm window, in the Status bar, you see the button Show tool window bars or Hide tool window
                bars. This button toggles the showing of the tool window bars. If you hover your mouse pointer over this button, the list of the currently available tool windows show up.

See the pages Overview of the user interface and Tool windows to learn more about showing or hiding tool windows.

Code with smart assistance

When you have created a new project or opened an existing one, it is time to start coding.

Creating a Python file

Select the project root in the Project tool window, then select File | New ... from the main menu or press Alt+Insert.

Create a Python file

Choose the option Python file from the popup, and then type the new filename.

Creating a new Python file

PyCharm creates a new Python file and opens it for editing.

New Python file

PyCharm takes care of the routine so that you can focus on the important. Use the following coding capabilities to create error-free applications without wasting precious time.

Code completion

Code completion is a great time-saver, regardless of the type of file you’re working with.

Basic completion works as you type and completes any name instantly.

Smart type-matching completion analyzes the context you’re currently working in and offers more accurate suggestions based on that analysis.

Smart code completion

Intention actions

PyCharm keeps an eye on what you are currently doing and makes smart suggestions, called intention actions, to save more of your time. Indicated with a lightbulb, intention actions let you apply automatic changes to code that is correct (in contrast to code inspections that provide quick-fixes for code that may be incorrect). Did you forget to add some parameters and field initializers to the constructor? Not a problem with PyCharm. Click the lightbulb (or press Alt+Enter) and select one of the suggested options:

Intention Action

The full list of available intention actions can be found in File | Settings | Editor | Intentions or PyCharm | Preferences | Editor | Intentions for macOS users.

Keep your code neat

PyCharm monitors your code and tries to keep it accurate and clean. It detects potential errors and problems and suggests quick-fixes for them.

Every time the IDE finds unused code, an endless loop, and many other things that likely require your attention, you’ll see a lightbulb. Click it, or press Alt+Enter, to apply a fix.

The complete list of available inspections can be found under Settings | Editor | Inspections (or PyCharm | Preferences | Editor | Inspections for macOS users). Disable some of them, or enable others, plus adjust the severity of each inspection. You decide whether it should be considered an error or just a warning.

Generate some code

Writing code can be a lot easier and quicker when you use the code generation options available in PyCharm. The Code | Generate menu Alt+Insert will help you with creating symbols from usage, as well as suggest overridin or implementing some functions:

Generate code

Use live templates (choose Code | Insert Live Template or press Ctrl+J) to produce the entire code constructs. You can explore the available ready-to-use live templates In the Settings/Preferences dialog Ctrl+Alt+S(Settings | Editor | Live templates or PyCharm | Preferences | Editor | Live Templates if you are a macOS user).

If you see that you are lacking something especially important for your development, extend this set of templates with your own. Also, consider quickly surrounding your code with complete constructs (choose Code | Surround With or press Ctrl+Alt+T. For example, with an if statement:

Surround code

When your project is big, or when you have to work with someone else’s code, it’s vital to be able to quickly find what you are looking for and dig into the code. This is why PyCharm comes with a set of navigation and search features that help you find your way through any code no matter how tangled it is.

With these search facilities, you can find and replace any fragment of code both in the currently opened file Ctrl+F, or in an entire project Ctrl+Shift+F.

Search for usages

To find where a particular symbol is used, PyCharm suggests full-scale search via Find Usages Alt+F7:

Find usages

Project navigation

You can tell a lot just looking at your File Structure, with its imports or call hierarchies:

File structure

Also, you can navigate to:

The icons in the left-hand gutter can also help you with navigation:

Navigating by using the left-hand gutter

Navigate through the timeline

Remembering all your activity in the project, PyCharm can easily navigate you to the Recent Files Ctrl+E or Recently Changed Files Alt+Shift+C.

To go through the history of changes, try using Back/Forward navigation (Ctrl+Alt+Left/ Ctrl+Alt+Right) and/or go to last edit location Ctrl+Shift+Backspace.

Search Everywhere

If you have a general idea of what you're looking for, you can always locate the corresponding element using one of the existing navigation features. But what if you want to look for something in every nook and cranny? The answer is to use Search Everywhere!

To try it, click the magnifying glass button in the upper right-hand corner of the window, or invoke it with Double Shift (press Shift twice).

search everything window

Run, debug and test

Now when you’ve played with the code and discovered what you can do with it, it’s time to run, debug and test your app.

Run

The easiest way to run an application is to right-click in the editor, and then choose Run <name> from the context menu:

Running code

If your Python script contains the __main__ clause, then you can click the Run icon button in the gutter, and then choose the desired command.

You can see the your script execution in the Run tool window.

Run tool window

When you perform run, debug, or test operations with PyCharm, you always start a process based on one of the existing run/debug configurations, using its parameters.

When you run your application for the very first time, PyCharm automatically creates the temporary Run/Debug configuration. You can modify it to specify or alter the default parameters and save it as a permanent Run/Debug configuration.

See how to tune run/debug configurations in Run/debug configurations.

Debug

Does your application stumble on a runtime error? To find out what’s causing it, you will have to do some debugging. PyCharm supports the debugger on all platforms.

Debugging starts with placing breakpoints at which program execution will be suspended, so you can explore program data. Just click the gutter of the line where you want the breakpoint to appear.

To start debugging your application, press Shift+F9. Then go through the program execution step by step (see the available options in the Run menu or the Debug tool window), evaluate any arbitrary expression, add watches, and manually set values for the variables.

Debug tool window

Refer to the section Debugging for details.

Test

It is a good idea to test your applications, and PyCharm helps doing it as simple as possible.

With PyCharm, you can:

To learn about the numbers, read the Test Runner tab section.

PyCharm supports all the major Python testing frameworks:

For each of these frameworks, PyCharm provides its own run/debug configuration.

Refer to tutorial Step 3. Test your first Python application and to the Run tests section for details.

With PyCharm Professional you can run, debug, and test your Python code remotely. You can deploy your local applications to some remote server. To learn about deployment servers, refer to the section Configuring Synchronization with a Web Server. PyCharm Professional also helps compare local and remote folders, and synchronize the local copy with that deployed on the server.

Keep your source code under Version Control

VCS

If you are keeping your source code under version control, you will be glad to know that PyCharm integrates with many popular version control systems: Git (or GitHub), Mercurial, Perforce (supported in Professional edition only), Subversion. To specify credentials and any settings specific to a particular VCS, go to Settings | Version Control (or PyCharm | Preferences | Version Control if you are a macOS user).

The VCS menu gives you a clue about what commands are available. For example, you can see the changes you’ve made, commit them, create changelists and much more from the Local Changes view: VCS | Show Changes (or just press Alt+9). Also, find some VCS basic commands in the Navigation bar above the editor:

Version Control System

Refer to the section Version control for details.

Local history

In addition to traditional version control, you can use the local history. With Local History, PyCharm automatically tracks changes you make to the source code, the results of refactoring, and so on

Local history is always enabled. To view it for a file or a folder, bring up Local History by selecting VCS | Local History | Show History. Here you can review the changes, revert them, or create a patch.

Process data

PyCharm has an interactive Python console to perform smart operations over data with on-the-fly syntax check with inspections, braces and quotes matching, and of course, code completion. You can also benefit from the built-in support for Anaconda.

With PyCharm Professional, you can analyze and visualize various scientific and statistical data. Jupyter Notebook integration enables editing, executing, and debugging notebook source code and examining execution outputs, including stream data, images, and other media.

Jupyter notebook support

With the R plugin installed in PyCharm, you can perform various statistical computing using R language and use coding assistance, visual debugging, smart running and preview tools, and other popular IDE features.

R plugin

As you might have noticed already, creating projects of the various types (Django, for example) requires a data source. It is also quite possible that you inject SQL statements into your source code.

PyCharm Professional does not enable you to create databases, but provides facilities to manage and query them. Once you are granted access to a certain database, you can configure one or more data sources within PyCharm that reflect the structure of the database and store the database access credentials. Based on this information, PyCharm establishes a connection to the database and provides the ability to retrieve or change information contained therein.

Access to the databases is provided by the Database tool window(View | Tool Windows | Database). This tool window allows you to work with the databases. It lets you view and modify data structures in your databases, and perform other associated tasks.

DB tool window

See Database tools and SQL for details.

Customize your environment

Feel free to tweak the IDE so it suits your needs perfectly and is as helpful and comfortable as it can be. Go to File | Settings(PyCharm | Preferences for macOS users) to see the list of available customization options.

Appearance

The first thing to fine-tune is the general "look and feel." Go to File | Settings | Appearance and Behavior | Appearance(PyCharm | Preferences | Appearance and Behavior | Appearance for macOS users) to select the IDE theme: the light themes or Darcula if you prefer a darker setting.

Editor

The many pages available under File | Settings | Editor(PyCharm | Preferences | Editor for macOS users) help you adjust every aspect of the editor’s behavior. A lot of options are available here, from general settings (like Drag'n'Drop enabling, scrolling configuration, and so on.), to color configuration for each available language and use case, to tabs and code folding settings, to code completion behavior and even postfix templates.

Refer to the section Configuring PyCharm settings for details.

Code style

Code style can be defined for each language under File | Settings | Editor | Code Style(PyCharm | Preferences | Editor | Code Style for macOS users). You can also create and save your own coding style scheme.

Code style settings

Refer to Configuring code style and Code Quality Assistance Tips and Tricks, or How to Make Your Code Look Pretty? for details.

Keymap

PyCharm uses the keyboard-centric approach, meaning that nearly all actions possible in the IDE are mapped to keyboard shortcuts.

The set of keyboard shortcuts you work with is one of your most intimate habits — your fingers "remember" certain combinations of keys, and changing this habit is easier said than done. PyCharm supplies you with a default keymap (choose Help | Keymap Reference from the main menu) making your coding really productive and convenient. However, you can always change it going to File | Settings | Keymap(PyCharm | Preferences | Keymap for macOS users).

There are also some pre-defined keymaps (like Emacs, Visual Studio, Eclipse, NetBeans and so on), and you can also create your own keymap based on an existing one.

If you feel most productive with vi/Vim, an emulation mode will give you the best of both worlds. Enable the IdeaVim plugin in the IDE and select the vim keymap.

Refer to the section Configure keyboard shortcuts for details.

That’s it! Go ahead and develop with pleasure!

We hope this brief overview of essential PyCharm features will give you a quick start. There are many important features that make a developer’s life easier and more fun, and the source code neater and cleaner. Take these first few steps now, and then dig deeper when you feel the time is right:

Enjoy PyCharm! With any questions visit our Discussion Forum, twitter and blog, where you can find news, updates, and useful tips and tricks. Also, don't hesitate to report any problems to our support team) or the PyCharm issue tracker.

Last modified: 11 June 2021