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Get the OS Name and Version in Python

Modified: | Tags: Python

In Python, you can get the operating system (OS) and its version using the platform module from the standard library.

Contents

See the following article for how to get the Python version.

Examples in the first part were executed on macOS, with results on Windows and Ubuntu presented later along with OS-specific functions.

All sample code in this article assumes that the platform, os, and sys modules have been imported.

import platform
import os
import sys
source: platform_usage_mac.py

Get the OS name: platform.system(), os.name, sys.platform

platform.system() returns the OS name as a string, such as 'Linux', 'Darwin', 'Java', 'Windows'.

print(platform.system())
# Darwin
source: platform_usage_mac.py

The OS name can also be determined using os.name and sys.platform. os.name provides either 'posix' (Unix-like), 'nt' (Windows), or 'java', while sys.platform provides values like 'darwin', 'linux', 'win32', etc.

print(os.name)
# posix

print(sys.platform)
# darwin
source: platform_usage_mac.py

Results for Windows and Ubuntu are shown later.

Get the OS version: platform.release(), platform.version()

The OS version can be detected using platform.release() and platform.version(), both of which return a string.

platform.release() provides a simplified version.

print(platform.release())
# 23.0.0

print(platform.version())
# Darwin Kernel Version 23.0.0: Fri Sep 15 14:42:57 PDT 2023; root:xnu-10002.1.13~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T8112
source: platform_usage_mac.py

Get the OS information: platform.platform()

platform.platform() returns a string containing the OS name, version, and other information.

print(platform.platform())
# macOS-14.0-arm64-arm-64bit
source: platform_usage_mac.py

Setting the terse argument to True returns only minimal information.

print(platform.platform(terse=True))
# macOS-14.0
source: platform_usage_mac.py

Additionally, you can also specify the aliased argument. Although it makes no difference in the example environment, setting it to True may return an alias for the OS name in some cases.

print(platform.platform(aliased=True))
# macOS-14.0-arm64-arm-64bit
source: platform_usage_mac.py

If aliased is true, the function will use aliases for various platforms that report system names which differ from their common names, for example SunOS will be reported as Solaris platform.platform()— Python 3.12.1 documentation

Results on macOS, Windows, and Ubuntu

This section shows results on macOS, Windows, and Ubuntu, along with OS-specific functions.

macOS

Results for macOS Sonoma 14.0:

print(platform.system())
# Darwin

print(os.name)
# posix

print(sys.platform)
# darwin

print(platform.release())
# 23.0.0

print(platform.version())
# Darwin Kernel Version 23.0.0: Fri Sep 15 14:42:57 PDT 2023; root:xnu-10002.1.13~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T8112

print(platform.platform())
# macOS-14.0-arm64-arm-64bit
source: platform_usage_mac.py

Note that it returns Darwin rather than macOS or Sonoma. For more information, including the latest version numbers and their corresponding macOS names, refer to the Wikipedia page for Darwin.

The platform.mac_ver() function is specific to macOS, returning a tuple (release, versioninfo, machine). In the example environment, versioninfo is unknown, resulting in an empty string tuple.

print(platform.mac_ver())
# ('14.0', ('', '', ''), 'arm64')
source: platform_usage_mac.py

Windows

Results for Windows 11 Home:

print(platform.system())
# Windows

print(os.name)
# nt

print(sys.platform)
# win32

print(platform.release())
# 10

print(platform.version())
# 10.0.22621

print(platform.platform())
# Windows-10-10.0.22621-SP0
source: platform_usage_win.py

The return value of platform.release(), 10, is a string, not an integer. Note that even for Windows 11, the version number starts with 10.

platform.win32_ver() is a Windows-specific function that returns tuple (release, version, csd, ptype). csd indicates the service pack level.

print(platform.win32_ver())
# ('10', '10.0.22621', 'SP0', 'Multiprocessor Free')
source: platform_usage_win.py

Additionally, platform.win32_edition(), which returns the Windows edition as a string, and platform.win32_is_iot(), which returns True for the IoT edition, were added in Python 3.8.

print(platform.win32_edition())
# Core

print(platform.win32_is_iot())
# False
source: platform_usage_win.py

Ubuntu

Results for Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS:

print(platform.system())
# Linux

print(os.name)
# posix

print(sys.platform)
# linux

print(platform.release())
# 5.15.0-86-generic

print(platform.version())
# #96-Ubuntu SMP Wed Sep 20 08:23:49 UTC 2023

print(platform.platform())
# Linux-5.15.0-86-generic-x86_64-with-glibc2.35
source: platform_usage_ubuntu.py

The platform.linux_distribution() function, which returned the distribution name and version for Unix systems, was removed in Python 3.8.

The distribution name and version can be obtained using the third-party library, distro, which must be installed separately via pip.

import distro

print(distro.name())
# Ubuntu

print(distro.id())
# ubuntu

print(distro.version())
# 22.04
source: platform_usage_ubuntu.py

Sample code for switching operations based on the OS

You can switch functions or methods based on the OS by using functions like platform.system().

For example, get the creation time of a file.

def creation_date(path_to_file):
    """
    Try to get the date that a file was created, falling back to when it was
    last modified if that isn't possible.
    See http://stackoverflow.com/a/39501288/1709587 for explanation.
    """
    if platform.system() == 'Windows':
        return os.path.getctime(path_to_file)
    else:
        stat = os.stat(path_to_file)
        try:
            return stat.st_birthtime
        except AttributeError:
            # We're probably on Linux. No easy way to get creation dates here,
            # so we'll settle for when its content was last modified.
            return stat.st_mtime
source: os_stat.py

In this example, platform.system() is first used to check if the OS is Windows or not, and then exception handling is used to switch operations based on whether the st_birthtime attribute exists.

For more on exception handling, refer to the following article.

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