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Getting Started

Installation

pyhood needs Python 3.10 or newer. Install it into a virtual environment rather than your system Python:

python3.14 -m venv pyhood-env
source pyhood-env/bin/activate
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
python -m pip install pyhood

Substitute whichever interpreter you have — 3.10 through 3.14 are tested in CI. On Windows the activate line is pyhood-env\Scripts\activate.

Name the Python version explicitly

A virtual environment inherits the version of the interpreter that creates it, and python3 on macOS is still 3.9. Using bare python3 there produces a 3.9 environment where the install fails with no matching distribution found — which reads like the package is missing rather than a version problem.

brew install python@3.14

Why the virtual environment is not optional

Homebrew and Debian-based distributions mark their Python as externally managed, so installing into it is refused outright. Overriding that with --break-system-packages can break OS tooling that depends on the system packages.

A virtual environment also keeps pyhood's dependencies — requests, cryptography, pynacl — from colliding with other projects, and rm -rf pyhood-env undoes the whole install.

For development:

git clone https://github.com/jamestford/pyhood.git
cd pyhood
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"

First Login

pyhood requires a one-time device approval through the Robinhood mobile app. After that, sessions refresh automatically.

Step 1: Have Your Phone Ready

Open the Robinhood app on your phone. You'll need to tap "Yes, it's me" when prompted.

Step 2: Login

pyhood setup login

It prompts for your username and password — the password is read without echoing and is never stored — then Robinhood sends a device approval push notification to your phone. Tap "Yes, it's me" to approve. The session is saved to ~/.pyhood/session.json, readable only by you.

To log in from code instead:

import pyhood

session = pyhood.login(
    username="you@email.com",
    password="your_password",
    timeout=90,  # seconds to wait for device approval
)

Prefer the command where you can. A password written into a script tends to end up committed.

Step 3: Use the Client

import pyhood
from pyhood.client import PyhoodClient

# No credentials needed — reuses the stored session.
client = PyhoodClient(pyhood.login())

# Get a stock quote
quote = client.get_quote("AAPL")
print(f"AAPL: ${quote.price:.2f}")

# Check your buying power
power = client.get_buying_power()
print(f"Buying power: ${power:,.2f}")

Step 4: There Is No Step 4

Your session is cached at ~/.pyhood/session.json. Next time you call pyhood.login() or pyhood.refresh(), it reuses or refreshes the cached token automatically. No device approval needed.

# Subsequent runs — instant, no approval
session = pyhood.refresh()
client = PyhoodClient(session)

Environment Variables

For scripts and automation, store credentials in a .env file:

# .env
RH_USERNAME=you@email.com
RH_PASSWORD=your_password

import os
import pyhood
from dotenv import load_dotenv

load_dotenv()
session = pyhood.login(
    username=os.getenv("RH_USERNAME"),
    password=os.getenv("RH_PASSWORD"),
)

Never commit .env files

pyhood's .gitignore blocks .env and *.json by default. Double-check before pushing to a remote repo.