I have been working in python, and I have been trying to run projects on my MacBook. I am occasionally having an issue where my runtime will not properly find libraries. When looking into my directories, I have 2 installs of python.

/usr/bin/python3 – this is version 3.9, and considered ‘global’
/usr/local/bin/python3 – this is version 3.12 and considered ‘local’

When I install a library, it will only install to whichever directory of python is active, and the other runtime will not be able to find it. Some core libraries will only call correctly on one install and it is making it difficult to run code.

I have tried to uninstall all traces of python. When I tried to uninstall the global one with:
sudo rm -R usr/bin/python3 terminal would not allow it.

When I install python from the installer, it does not allow me to choose the directory. It always installs to the ‘local’ path.

After all this I am still able to see 2 runtime options in VS Code and I cannot get the older install to update or the newer one to install over it.

Is there a way to consolidate these installs? Or is there a good way to limit all my work to 1 environment? This may be a very noob question but I have done a good bit of digging and can’t find a concise answer.