PyMuPDF 2.1: smoother fresh installs and easier recovery
November 2, 2026
If you upgraded pymupdf4llm to 2.0, you may have hit import errors. pymupdf4llm depends on two companion packages, PyMuPDF (Core) and PyMuPDF Layout, and all three need to be on matching versions. Upgrading through pymupdf4llm could move pymupdf4llm itself to 2.0 while leaving Core and Layout at 1.28.2 and that kind of versioning broke the installation.
PyMuPDF 2.1 fixes most of the installation problems some users ran into with 2.0. In our testing more install and upgrade scenarios now succeed and no healthy installation was broken by the upgrade.
What 2.1 gives
Fresh installs just work. In a clean environment, installing through either pymupdf or pymupdf4llm now gives you a working setup.
Broken 2.0 environments can be repaired. If upgrading only pymupdf4llm to 2.0 left your environment broken, with Core and Layout still at 1.28.2, upgrading to 2.1 fixes it. Either pip install -U pymupdf or pip install -U pymupdf4llm will do it.
Our recommendation to upgrade in the cleanest way is to use:
pip install --force-reinstall --no-cache-dir pymupdfThis command produced a working 2.1 installation in every starting environment we tested. Find out more on our PyMuPDF: Installation documentation.
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