Quick Fix: Python raises the ImportError: No module named 'gpt4all' when it cannot find the library gpt4all. The most frequent source of this error is that you haven’t installed gpt4all explicitly with pip install gpt4all. Alternatively, you may have different Python versions on your computer, and gpt4all is not installed for the particular version you’re using.
Problem Formulation
You’ve just learned about the awesome capabilities of the gpt4all library and you want to try it out, so you start your code with the following statement:
import gpt4all
This is supposed to import the gpt4all library into your (virtual) environment. However, it only throws the following ImportError: No module named gpt4all:
>>> import gpt4all
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#0>", line 1, in <module>
import gpt4all
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'gpt4all'
Solution Idea 1: Install Library gpt4all
The most likely reason is that Python doesn’t provide gpt4all in its standard library. You need to install it first!
To fix this error, you can run the following command in your Windows shell:
$ pip install gpt4all
This simple command installs gpt4all in your virtual environment on Windows, Linux, and MacOS. It assumes that your pip version is updated. If it isn’t, use the following two commands in your terminal, command line, or shell (there’s no harm in doing it anyways):
💡 Note: Don’t copy and paste the $ symbol. This is just to illustrate that you run it in your shell/terminal/command line.
Solution Idea 2: Fix the Path
The error might persist even after you have installed the gpt4all library. This likely happens because pip is installed but doesn’t reside in the path you can use. Although pip may be installed on your system the script is unable to locate it. Therefore, it is unable to install the library using pip in the correct path.
To fix the problem with the path in Windows follow the steps given next.
Step 1: Open the folder where you installed Python by opening the command prompt and typing where python
Step 2: Once you have opened the Python folder, browse and open the Scripts folder and copy its location. Also verify that the folder contains the pip file.
Step 3: Now open the Scripts directory in the command prompt using the cd command and the location that you copied previously.
Step 4: Now install the library using pip install ... command. Here’s an analogous example:
After having followed the above steps, execute our script once again. And you should get the desired output.
Other Solution Ideas
The ModuleNotFoundError may appear due to relative imports. You can learn everything about relative imports and how to create your own module in this article.
You may have mixed up Python and pip versions on your machine. In this case, to install gpt4all for Python 3, you may want to try python3 -m pip install gpt4all or even pip3 install gpt4all instead of pip install gpt4all
If you face this issue server-side, you may want to try the command pip install --user gpt4all
If you’re using Ubuntu, you may want to try this command: sudo apt install gpt4all or sudo pip3 install gpt4all
You can also check out this article to learn more about possible problems that may lead to an error when importing a library.
Understanding the “import” Statement
import gpt4all
In Python, the import statement serves two main purposes:
Search the module by its name, load it, and initialize it.
Define a name in the local namespace within the scope of the import statement. This local name is then used to reference the accessed module throughout the code.
What’s the Difference Between ImportError and ModuleNotFoundError?
What’s the difference between ImportError and ModuleNotFoundError?
Python defines an error hierarchy, so some error classes inherit from other error classes. In our case, the ModuleNotFoundError is a subclass of the ImportError class.
You can see this in this screenshot from the docs:
You can also check this relationship using the issubclass() built-in function:
Specifically, Python raises the ModuleNotFoundError if the module (e.g., gpt4all) cannot be found. If it can be found, there may be a problem loading the module or some specific files within the module. In those cases, Python would raise an ImportError.
If an import statement cannot import a module, it raises an ImportError. This may occur because of a faulty installation or an invalid path. In Python 3.6 or newer, this will usually raise a ModuleNotFoundError.
Related Videos
The following video shows you how to resolve the ImportError:
How to Fix “ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘gpt4all'” in PyCharm
If you create a new Python project in PyCharm and try to import the gpt4all library, it’ll raise the following error message:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:/Users/.../main.py", line 1, in <module>
import gpt4all
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'gpt4all'
Process finished with exit code 1
The reason is that each PyCharm project, per default, creates a virtual environment in which you can install custom Python modules. But the virtual environment is initially empty—even if you’ve already installed gpt4all on your computer!
Here’s a screenshot exemplifying this for the pandas library. It’ll look similar for gpt4all.
The fix is simple: Use the PyCharm installation tooltips to install Pandas in your virtual environment—two clicks and you’re good to go!
First, right-click on the pandas (in your case: gpt4all) text in your editor:
Second, click “Show Context Actions” in your context menu. In the new menu that arises, click “Install GPT4All” and wait for PyCharm to finish the installation.
The code will run after your installation completes successfully.
As an alternative, you can also open the Terminal tool at the bottom and type:
