Where is pip cache folder?

Question

The default location for the cache directory depends on the Operating System:

Unix

~/.cache/pip and it respects the XDG_CACHE_HOME directory.

macOS

~/Library/Caches/pip

Windows

<CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA>\pip\Cache

Wheel Cache

pip will read from the subdirectory wheels within the pip cache directory and use any packages found there. [snip]

https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/reference/pip_install/#caching

The location of the cache directory can be changed via the command line option --cache-dir.

It depends on the operating system.

With pip 20.1 or later, you can find it with:

pip cache dir

For example with macOS:

$ pip cache dir
/Users/hugo/Library/Caches/pip

Docs:

• https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/reference/pip_cache/
• https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/reference/pip_install/#caching

Pythonic and cross-platform way:

import pip
from distutils.version import LooseVersion

if LooseVersion(pip.__version__) < LooseVersion('10'):
    # older pip version
    from pip.utils.appdirs import user_cache_dir
else:
    # newer pip version
    from pip._internal.utils.appdirs import user_cache_dir

print(user_cache_dir('pip'))
print(user_cache_dir('wheel'))

Under the hood, it normalizes paths, manages different locations for exotic and ordinary operating systems and platforms, performs Windows registry lookup.

It may worth mentioning, if you have different Python versions installed, 2.x'es and 3.x'es, they all do share the same cache location.

You can backup the associated wheel rather than attempting to perform a backup of the cache folder.

Download the wheel for csselect of version 0.9.1 into /tmp/wheelhouse:

pip wheel --wheel-dir=/tmp/wheelhouse cssselect==0.9.1

Install the downloaded wheel:

pip install /tmp/wheelhouse/cssselect-0.9.1-py2-none-any.whl