How to fix 'TypeError: '<' not supported between instances of 'str' and 'int' when running pyautogui.locateOnScreen()?

im writing a program that would be able to detect the shiny sprite of whatever pokemon that im hunting, however, whenever i run pyautogui.locateOnScreen() i raise a TypeError: '&lt;' not supported between instances of 'str' and 'int'

import pyautogui as pag
pag.locateOnScreen('beldum.png')

i also took the screenshot of the image myself, but i heard that using pyautogui's own screenshot function is better. i tried doing this, but i get the same type error whenever i try to do it.

Here are the tracebacks that I got.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/path/to/file", line 3, in <module>
    pag.locateOnScreen('beldum.png')
  File "/path/to/venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pyautogui/__init__.py", line 172, in wrapper
    return wrappedFunction(*args, **kwargs)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/path/to/venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pyautogui/__init__.py", line 210, in locateOnScreen
    return pyscreeze.locateOnScreen(*args, **kwargs)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/path/to/venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pyscreeze/__init__.py", line 375, in locateOnScreen
    screenshotIm = screenshot(
                   ^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/path/to/venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pyscreeze/__init__.py", line 527, in _screenshot_osx
    if tuple(PIL__version__) < (6, 2, 1):

TypeError: '<' not supported between instances of 'str' and 'int'

I had the same problem when using pyautogui. I'm using Python 3.8, and the version of pyautogui is 9.5.0. Actually, this is a bug in the Python framework packages. I don't know if Python 3.11 works the same way. Anyway, this is how I met this problem and fixed it.

I have this error report:

File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.8/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pyscreeze/__init__.py", line 528, in _screenshot_osx
    if tuple(PIL__version__) < (6, 2, 1):
TypeError: '<' not supported between instances of 'str' and 'int'

Then I clicked into this report file and and trace back the value of PIL__version__. It's defined like this: __version__ = "9.5.0"

Now we find the problem. A simple test program can tell you everything:

__version__ = "9.5.0"
print(tuple(__version__))
print(type(tuple(__version__)))
print((6, 2, 1))
print(type((6,2,1)))

The output you'll get looks like this:

('9', '.', '5', '.', '0')
<class 'tuple'>
(6, 2, 1)
<class 'tuple'>

They are both tuples, but the elements inside this tuple are str and int types. Of course they can't be compared.

So you need to click into the reported error file. Replace this code:

if tuple(PIL__version__) < (6, 2, 1):

with this code:

if tuple(map(int, PIL__version__.split("."))) < (6, 2, 1):

Now everything should work fine.

You can also patch it on startup :

import pyscreeze
import PIL

__PIL_TUPLE_VERSION = tuple(int(x) for x in PIL.__version__.split("."))
pyscreeze.PIL__version__ = __PIL_TUPLE_VERSION

<rest of your app>

Disclaimer this won't work on some edge cases. and can also break due to code changes on pyscreeze

You can try this following

1.Open a __init__.py in your path "/path/to/venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pyscreeze/__init__.py".
On the Spyder or the other.

2.You just replace this code in line 527

if tuple(PIL__version__) < (6, 2, 1):

with

if tuple([int(x) for x in PIL__version__.split(".")])< (6, 2, 1):

3.Save the file.

I have the same problem and these step work for me. Hope it's useful.