How to leave/exit/deactivate a Python virtualenv

Usually, activating a virtualenv gives you a shell function named:

$ deactivate

which puts things back to normal.

I have just looked specifically again at the code for virtualenvwrapper, and, yes, it too supports deactivate as the way to escape from all virtualenvs.

If you are trying to leave an Anaconda environment, the command depends upon your version of conda. Recent versions (like 4.6) install a conda function directly in your shell, in which case you run:

conda deactivate

Older conda versions instead implement deactivation using a stand-alone script:

source deactivate

I found that when within a Miniconda3 environment I had to run:

conda deactivate

Neither deactivate nor source deactivate worked for me.

For my particular case, I go to to the working directory

CD /myworkingdirectory

Then I activate my env like this:

my-env/scripts/activate

From this same working folder (/myworkingdirectory) to deactivate, I tried this but it does nothing:

my-env/scripts/deactivate

This does work:

deactivate

Using the deactivate feature provided by the venv's activate script requires you to trust the deactivation function to be properly coded to cleanly reset all environment variables back to how they were before— taking into account not only the original activation, but also any switches, configuration, or other work you may have done in the meantime.

It's probably fine, but it does introduce a new, non-zero risk of leaving your environment modified afterwards.

However, it's not technically possible for a process to directly alter the environment variables of its parent, so we can use a separate sub-shell to be absolutely sure our venvs don't leave any residual changes behind:

To activate:

$ bash --init-file PythonVenv/bin/activate

• This starts a new shell around the venv. Your original bash shell remains unmodified.

To deactivate:

$ exit OR [CTRL]+[D]

• This exits the entire shell the venv is in, and drops you back to the original shell from before the activation script made any changes to the environment.

Example:

[user@computer ~]$ echo $VIRTUAL_ENV
No virtualenv!

[user@computer ~]$ bash --init-file PythonVenv/bin/activate

(PythonVenv) [user@computer ~]$ echo $VIRTUAL_ENV
/home/user/PythonVenv

(PythonVenv) [user@computer ~]$ exit
exit

[user@computer ~]$ echo $VIRTUAL_ENV
No virtualenv!

Since the deactivate function created by sourcing ~/bin/activate cannot be discovered by the usual means of looking for such a command in ~/bin, you may wish to create one that just executes the function deactivate.

The problem is that a script named deactivate containing a single command deactivate will cause an endless loop if accidentally executed while not in the venv. A common mistake.

This can be avoided by only executing deactivate if the function exists (i.e. has been created by sourcing activate).

#!/bin/bash

declare -Ff deactivate  && deactivate

Running deactivate [name of your environment] is able to exit/deactivate from your python environment.

Example with python3.6 Windows 10:

PS C:\Users\kyrlon\Desktop> py -m venv env1
PS C:\Users\kyrlon\Desktop> .\env1\Scripts\activate
(env1) PS C:\Users\kyrlon\Desktop> deactivate env1
PS C:\Users\klongwood3\Desktop> py -m venv env1

Example with python3.9 on Linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Desktop:

kyrlon@pc1:~$ python3 -m venv venv1
kyrlon@pc1:~$ source venv1/bin/activate
(venv1) kyrlon@pc1:~$ deactivate venv1
kyrlon@pc1:~$

I my case, I was able to activate virtual environment using env-name\scripts\activate and deactivate it using deactivate. However, after running update on my windows PC deactivate was no longer recognized as an internal or external command. What I used from that moment onward is env-name\scripts\deactivate and that solved the problem.

$ conda deactivate
or
$ source deactivate
would work.

If it doesn't work, try deactivate [name of your environment] instead.