Error message "Linter pylint is not installed"

Check the path Pylint has been installed to, by typing which pylint on your terminal.

You will get something like: /usr/local/bin/pylint

Copy it.

Go to your Visual Studio Code settings in the preferences tab and find the line that goes

"python.linting.pylintPath": "pylint"

Edit the line to be

"python.linting.pylintPath": "/usr/local/bin/pylint",

replacing the value "pylint" with the path you got from typing which pylint.

Save your changes and reload Visual Studio Code.


If you're working in a virtual environment (virtualenv), you'll definitely need to update the python.lintint.pylintPath setting (and probably the python.pythonPath setting, as well, if you haven't already) if you want linting to work, like this:

// File "settings.json" (workspace-specific one is probably best)
{
    // ...
    "python.linting.pylintPath": "C:/myproject/venv/Scripts/pylint.exe",
    "python.pythonPath": "C:/myproject/venv/Scripts/python.exe",
    // ...
}

That's for Windows, but other OSs are similar. The .exe extension was necessary for it to work for me on Windows, even though it's not required when actually running it in the console.

If you just want to disable it, then use the python.linting.pylintEnabled": false setting as mentioned in Ben Delaney's answer.


  1. Open a terminal (ctrl+~)
  2. Run the command pip install pylint

If that doesn't work: On the off chance you've configured a non-default Python path for your editor, you'll need to match that Python's install location with the pip executable you're calling from the terminal.

This is an issue because the Python extension's settings enable Pylint by default. If you'd rather turn off linting, you can instead change this setting from true to false in your user or workspace settings:

"python.linting.pylintEnabled": false