QGIS3 won't install on mac with python3.6 already installed through Ananconda

Question

QGIS installer keeps telling "QGIS requires Python 3.6." after which it quits installing on Mac. However I have python 3.6.4 at least on 4 locations

1) ~/anaconda/bin/python

2) /usr/bin/python3

3) /usr/local/bin/python

4) /usr/local/bin/python3.6 (through a symbolic link).

All these files refer to the same file, when invoking them they all yield:

Python 3.6.4 |Anaconda custom (64-bit)| (default, Jan 16 2018, 12:04:33) [GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Clang 4.0.1 (tags/RELEASE_401/final)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

Does anyone know where QGIS3 installer looks for python 3.6, so I could set a symbolic link to the python 3.6 version that is already installed through Anaconda?

Thanks, Theo

Answer 1

Ran into this problem myself. Creating a symbolic link to where the installer expects to find python works. I had to find where Homebrew installed Python... (note the version in the path)

sudo ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/python/3.6.5/Frameworks/Python.framework /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework

Answer 2

I had python 3.7 and QGIS 3.X was looking for python 3.6.

error: "qgis requires python 3.6"

to downgrade I tried many things but finally "brew prune" and installing 3.6 directly from python.org worked for me.

https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-366/

Answer 3

Install via the terminal with

conda install -c conda-forge qgis 

I had the same issue and could only install QGIS with this solution. https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/qgis

Answer 4

I had to install python 3.6 directly downloaded from www.python.org (ignoring the already installed version by Anaconda). This worked. See remark on http://www.kyngchaos.com/blog/2018/20180315_qgis_3_must_use_python.org_python_3