Cant activate environment from Visual Studio Code

Question

I use Python mostly in Spyder for data science. Both Visual Studio Code and virtual environments is fairly new to me.

Anyway, using the terminal in Visual Studio Code I try to switch between environments. I have tried both conda activate venv and activate venv. I get no error message but using conda env list to see which environment is active I seem stuck in Base.

Doing the same thing in the Anaconda Prompt I am allowed to switch between environments.

I use Windows and I start Visual Studio Code from the Anaconda Navigator.

What is going on?

Answer 1

You need to set your VScode terminal as cmd.exe and not as PowerShell.

#########UPADTE##########

The solution under is deprecated, the new solution can be found in the documentation here:

#########################

Here is how to change your default terminal,

or you can change your settings.json file as follow:

"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe"

From documentation:

Note: conda environments cannot be automatically activated in the integrated terminal if PowerShell is set as the integrated shell.