🔍 Introduction

Python’s packaging tools have come a long way—from pip to poetry. But as projects grow in size and complexity, many of these tools start to slow down or become harder to manage.

Meet uv — a blazing-fast, Rust-powered package and project manager for Python. Designed to be a drop-in replacement for existing tools, uv dramatically improves performance and simplifies your development workflow.

✨ Key Features

• 🧩 Drop-in Replacement: Use familiar commands like uv pip install.
• ⚡ Lightning Fast: Benchmarks show 80–115x speed improvements with a warm cache.
• 🧠 Smarter Dependency Management: Detects and resolves conflicts with clear error messaging.
• 💾 Disk-Efficient: Uses a global cache to deduplicate dependencies.
• 🛠️ Script Runner: Inline dependency execution via uv run.
• 🗂️ Universal Lockfile: Portable and consistent lockfiles.
• 🏗️ Workspace Support: Cargo-style multi-project management.
• 📦 Advanced Support: Git dependencies, local installs, editable mode, and more.

🔧 Installation

Using the Official Installer

macOS / Linux

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

Windows (PowerShell)

irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex

Using pip or pipx

pip install uv
# or
pipx install uv

🛠️ Creating a New Project

Option 1: In One Command

uv init hello-world
cd hello-world

Option 2: In an Existing Directory

mkdir hello-world
cd hello-world
uv init

📦 Managing Dependencies

➕ Add a Dependency

uv add flask

Remove a Dependency

uv remove flask

🚀 Running Scripts

Run a script

uv run main.py

def main():
    print("Hello from hello-world!")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Run with one inline dependency

uv run --with requests main.py

import requests
print(requests.get("https://api.github.com").json())

Run with multiple dependencies

uv run --with requests --with beautifulsoup4 main.py

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

res = requests.get("https://example.com")
soup = BeautifulSoup(res.text, "html.parser")
print(soup.title.text)

🐍 Managing Python Versions

uv can detect and use your system Python. But it also installs and manages Python versions automatically, so you don’t need to install Python separately.

📥 Install a Specific Python Version

uv python install 3.12

🧩 Install Multiple Versions

uv python install 3.11 3.12

♻️ Reinstall Python Versions

uv python install --reinstall

📋 View Installed Versions

uv python list

See the python list documentation for more details.

🧾 Conclusion

uv isn’t just another package manager—it’s a modern toolchain built for speed, clarity, and scalability. Whether you’re managing dependencies, running scripts, or juggling multiple Python versions, uv helps you move faster and stay organized.