How to use pip in a uv virtual environment

When working with uv, you might occasionally need access to pip in your virtual environments, particularly when using tools that rely on pip directly, such as Jupyter’s %pip magic command.

Adding pip to a uv Virtual Environment

By default, uv virtual environments don’t include pip. To create a virtual environment with pip installed:

uv venv --seed

To add pip to an existing virtual environment:

uv pip install pip

Activating the Environment

Once you’ve created the environment with pip, activate it:

# On Unix/macOS
source .venv/bin/activate

# On Windows
.venv\Scripts\activate

Now you can use pip commands directly, e.g.,

pip list