Step-by-step guide for installing the pygame module for Python to work with IDLE on a Mac.

title: Installing pygame for IDLE on Mac published: true description: Step-by-step guide for installing the pygame module for Python to work with IDLE on a Mac. tags:

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published_at: 2025-10-23 03:24 +0000

IDLE is the easy-to-use IDE that comes bundled with Python by default. It's not the greatest IDE in the world, but it's been steadily improving with each release.

If you work a lot with Python, you might also have conda installed, or something similar, to create virtual environments with different Python versions and packaged installed. Working in IDLE is going to sidestep all that.

If you have ever installed Python from https://www.python.org/, you will have IDLE installed already. If not, go download and install it now. Note: If you have an older Mac and run into problems, you may need to use Python 3.10 instead of the newest version. (This worked for me on my Mac running OS X 12.7.6 "Monterey".)

The first step requires finding the actual binary associated with IDLE.

• Right-click on IDLE and select Show Package Contents.
• Inside the package, open Contents, then MacOS.
• Right-click on Python and choose Show Original.

Now you've located the Python binary for your version of IDLE. Highlight the file and choose Edit -> Copy. The path to the file will probably be something like this: /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.14/Resources/Python.app/Contents/MacOS/Python

The next step is done using the Terminal. Find the Terminal app in /Applications/Utilities/ and launch it.

Once the Terminal has started up fully and you see the command prompt, start by pasting the file path to the python binary on your clipboard.

After that, you will type or paste the following (note that it starts with a space):

 -m pip install -U pygame --user

• -U will cause pygame to be upgraded if it's installed already
• --user will cause pygame to be installed for the current user, rather than for all users

So the whole command will look something like this:

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.14/Resources/Python.app/Contents/MacOS/Python -m pip install -U pygame --user

That's it! If everything goes well, pygame will install and be available inside IDLE. If you run into a problem, leave a comment.