Python 3.13. is the newest major release of the Python programming language, and it contains many new features and optimizations compared to Python 3.12. (Compared to the last release candidate, 3.13.0rc3, 3.13.0 contains two small bug fixes and some documentation and testing changes.)Python 3.13, compared to 3.12. Python 3.13 was released on October 7, 2024
Major new features and changes in Python 3.13 are:
- Interactive Interpreter: A new interactive shell now includes multi-line editing, history browsing, color-enabled prompts and tracebacks, and easier command access with shortcuts like F1 for help and F3 for "paste mode." This upgrade improves the developer experience in the REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop)(
- Improved Error Messages: Python 3.13 enhances the clarity of error messages. For example, if you mistakenly name your script after a standard library module, Python now suggests a fix by renaming the script to avoid conflicts. It also gives better suggestions for incorrect keyword arguments(
- Filesystem and Pathlib Enhancements: The behavior of the ** (globstar) pattern used in file path searching now matches both files and directories recursively, fixing inconsistencies from earlier versions. The glob.translate() function can also convert glob patterns to regular expressions, offering more flexibility(
- Platform and Module Changes: Python now officially supports Android and wasm32-wasi, but drops support for wasm32-emscripten. Several outdated standard library modules have been removed, such as cgi, telnetlib, and mailcap(
- A new and improved interactive interpreter, based on PyPy's, featuring multi-line editing and color support, as well as colorized exception tracebacks.
- An experimental free-threaded build mode, which disables the Global Interpreter Lock, allowing threads to run more concurrently. The build mode is available as an experimental feature in the Windows and macOS installers as well.
- A preliminary, experimental JIT, providing the ground work for significant performance improvements.
- The locals() builtin function (and its C equivalent) now has well-defined semantics when mutating the returned mapping, which allows debuggers to operate more consistently.
- A modified version of mimalloc is now included, optional but enabled by default if supported by the platform, and required for the free-threaded build mode.
- Docstrings now have their leading indentation stripped, reducing memory use and the size of .pyc files. (Most tools handling docstrings already strip leading indentation.)
- The dbm module has a new dbm.sqlite3 backend that is used by default when creating new files.
- The minimum supported macOS version was changed from 10.9 to 10.13 (High Sierra). Older macOS versions will not be supported going forward.
- WASI is now a Tier 2 supported platform. Emscripten is no longer an officially supported platform (but Pyodide continues to support Emscripten).
- iOS is now a Tier 3 supported platform.
- Android is now a Tier 3 supported platform.
- PEP 594 (Removing dead batteries from the standard library) scheduled removals of many deprecated modules: aifc, audioop, chunk, cgi, cgitb, crypt, imghdr, mailcap, msilib, nis, nntplib, ossaudiodev, pipes, sndhdr, spwd, sunau, telnetlib, uu, xdrlib, lib2to3.
- Many other removals of deprecated classes, functions and methods in various standard library modules.
- C API removals and deprecations. (Some removals present in alpha 1 were reverted in alpha 2, as the removals were deemed too disruptive at this time.)
- New deprecations, most of which are scheduled for removal from Python 3.15 or 3.16.
