Python Cross Platform Smoothing

Python Cross-Platform Smoothing

Verified patterns for writing Python scripts that behave correctly on Windows, Linux, and macOS across CLI, TUI, and GUI contexts.

Unicode Output on Windows (Rich / Typer / any stdout)

Problem: Windows defaults stdout/stderr to a legacy code page (cp1252, cp437). Rich and Typer use Unicode characters (box-drawing, spinners, emoji) that these encodings cannot represent, causing UnicodeEncodeError at runtime.

Solution: Reconfigure streams before importing Rich or Typer.

import sys
from io import TextIOWrapper

# Ensure UTF-8 output on Windows (cp1252 default cannot encode emoji/spinner chars).
# reconfigure() is available on Python 3.7+ when stdout is a TextIOWrapper.
if isinstance(sys.stdout, TextIOWrapper):
    sys.stdout.reconfigure(encoding="utf-8", errors="replace")
if isinstance(sys.stderr, TextIOWrapper):
    sys.stderr.reconfigure(encoding="utf-8", errors="replace")

# Rich/Typer imports come AFTER the reconfigure block
import typer
from rich.console import Console

Placement rule: Immediately after stdlib imports, before any third-party imports. Rich inspects stdout encoding at import time.

errors="replace" substitutes unencodable characters with ? instead of raising. Prefer this over errors="strict" for CLI tools where a crash is worse than a degraded character.

isinstance guard skips reconfigure when stdout is not a TextIOWrapper (e.g. redirected to BytesIO in tests, or already a custom wrapper). Safe to include unconditionally.

Rich Console variant: When targeting legacy Windows consoles (cmd.exe without Windows Terminal), also pass legacy_windows=False to force ANSI escape sequences instead of the Windows Console API:

console = Console(legacy_windows=False)

Why not env vars? PYTHONUTF8=1 and PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8 require the caller to set them before the process starts — not self-contained in the script. The reconfigure() pattern is fully portable with no external configuration required.

Also applies to: pathlib.Path.write_text(), open(), and any file I/O that inherits the default encoding. Always pass encoding="utf-8" explicitly to file write calls on Windows:

path.write_text(content, encoding="utf-8")
open(path, "w", encoding="utf-8")