If it's installed, that environment can be used as a valid kernel for Jupyter notebooks in Visual Studio Code. If you select an environment on the system that does not have IPyKernel installed and attempt to run the notebook, you will be prompted to install IPyKernel. The default kernel for Python is provided by the IPyKernel package. Without the Python extension installed, the Jupyter extension can only find kernels installed into Jupyter-registered locations.

When the Python extension is installed, any Python environment (meaning a Python interpreter and an associated location for Python packages), installed on the system can be used as a kernel to execute Python code. These kernel will be shown in the kernel picker under the group label 'Jupyter Kernel.' Python Environments

By installing them into the same locations as Jupyter they will get picked up by the Jupyter extension and should show up as options in the notebook kernel picker. Users can install kernelspec files for different languages on their system. When the Visual Studio Code Jupyter extension is executing cells, it's using Jupyter kernels to execute the code and retrieve output to display in the notebook document. Each Jupyter kernel has a Jupyter kernel specification (or Jupyter kernelspec), which contains a JSON file ( kernel.json) with details about the kernel-name, description, and CLI information required to launch a process as a kernel. The Jupyter Kernels category lists all Jupyter kernels that VS Code detects in the context of the compute system it’s operating in (your desktop, Codespaces, remote server, etc.).

Visual studio jupyter notebook