#4688·pygame

Missing SDL.h header

Author: KoPeyrNicCreated Dec 13, 2025Updated Jul 22, 2026

I tried to install Pygame on the official website on mac using brew, but it returned this message:

bash
Using cached pygame-2.6.0.tar.gz (15.8 MB)
  Installing build dependencies ... done
  Getting requirements to build wheel ... done
  Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... done
Building wheels for collected packages: pygame
  Building wheel for pygame (pyproject.toml) ... error
  error: subprocess-exited-with-error
  
  × Building wheel for pygame (pyproject.toml) did not run successfully.
  │ exit code: 1
  ╰─> [14 lines of output]
      src_c/_sdl2/sdl2.c:1094:10: fatal error: 'SDL.h' file not found
       1094 | #include "SDL.h"
            |          ^~~~~~~
      1 error generated.
      Skipping Cython compilation
      
      ---
      For help with compilation see:
          https://www.pygame.org/wiki/MacCompile
      To contribute to pygame development see:
          https://www.pygame.org/contribute.html
      ---
      
      error: command '/usr/bin/clang' failed with exit code 1
      [end of output]
  
  note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
  ERROR: Failed building wheel for pygame
Failed to build pygame
error: failed-wheel-build-for-install

× Failed to build installable wheels for some pyproject.toml based projects
╰─> pygame

It's the only error I got. How can I fix it?