How to fix PlatformIO: 'Can not find working Python 3.6+ interpreter' on Linux

Problem:

When trying to open PlatformIO in Visual Studio Code, you see the following error message:

PlatformIO: Can not find working Python 3.6+ Interpreter. Please install the latest Python 3 and restart VSCode

even though you have Python3 already installed.

Solution

The issue here is not that PlatformIO can’t find Python 3, it is that you don’t have venv (virtual environments) installed for your Python version!

On Ubuntu/Debian, you can install it using

sudo apt -y install python3-venv

Alternatively you can install it using pip:

pip install virtualenv