Fix CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED Issue For Python 3.13 on macOS

When using Python 3.13 on macOS, you may encounter a CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED error when using pip install, which uses HTTPS requests.

The error message looks like this:

WARNING: Retrying (Retry(total=4, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by 'SSLError(SSLCertVerificationError(1, '[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: unable to get local issuer certificate (_ssl.c:1028)'))': /simple/certifi/

Although the official Python documentation suggests running the Install Certificates.command script after Python is installed, you will still get the same error when you run the script.

Solution

First, you need to install the certifi package manually with the --trusted-host option to bypass the SSL verification:

# Use pip or pip3
pip install certifi --trusted-host pypi.org --trusted-host files.pythonhosted.org

Then, set the SSL_CERT_FILE environment variable to point to the certifi certificate bundle:

export SSL_CERT_FILE=$(python -m certifi)

After this variable is set, you should be able to run all the pip install commands without the CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED error.

If you don’t want type the command every time you use Python scripts, you can add it to the shell profile, like .bash_profile, .zshrc, or .bashrc depending on your shell:

# For zsh users
echo 'export SSL_CERT_FILE=$(python -m certifi)' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc