[Django]-Django:django.core.exceptions.AppRegistryNotReady: Apps aren't loaded yet

I ran into this issue today. There was an app in INSTALLED_APPS that didn’t exist. Once it was removed, it resolved the exception. Apps that can’t be imported for any reason will also raise an AppRegistryNotReady exception.

Here’s the bug history for this issue.

Additionally, trying to import something from the app level into the project level can cause this issue, too. For example, I’m currently working on project using Celery Beat. I tried defining task schedules at the app level as dictionaries which were then imported to the celery.py file of the project. Importing the dictionary from the app into the project caused Django to throw an AppRegistryNotReady exception. Likewise, importing items between apps can cause the exception.

I got this error when I tried loading a Django ORM model from inside of my Celery tasks file (which is not loaded by WSGI). To fix it, I put the following initialization code at the top above the import for the model class.

import os
import django
os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "myproj.settings")
django.setup()

# Django dependencies below this line
from myapp.models import MyModel

Django docs recommend this unusual approach here: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.1/topics/settings/#calling-django-setup-is-required-for-standalone-django-usage

./manage.py runserver will use your wsgi.py however it looks like the stack trace you’ve shown at the top does not include the wsgi file. Therefore the error is occurring before the wsgi file is loaded.

I’m not able to recreate your error, but since you seem to be using the new style wsgi and as you mention “the django version on the server is 1.8.5, and the local is 1.8.1”, I’m wondering if there might be something wrong in your environment.

My suggested steps are:

1. Rebuild your virtualenv. Delete the env folder and install again with pip install -r requirements.txt or similar.
2. Check out other questions on StackOverflow – this seems to be a common issue. E.g as above: Django 1.7 throws django.core.exceptions.AppRegistryNotReady: Models aren't loaded yet

Hopefully someone with more experience will be able to add suggestions. Sorry I don’t have the definitive answer for you.

There can be issue in your settings.py file . Specifically INSTALLED_APPS verify if you correctly included apps and separated with “,” .

I got this error too regardless of the existing answers. I solve by do locally import in the celery function.

I fixed it by setting the owner of the wsgi entry point that the apache calls to root:root

i also got the same issue when i was adding an authentication backend to my settings.py PyCharm automatically imports all requirements which are used in a file so
PyCharm imported the model and this causes an app not ready error in the registry.py check_apps_ready method

so the solution that works for me is basically check imported modules and remove unnecessary module imports the import to be removed to resolve that error

I had this error when importing a Model into apps.py

I needed this Model to use it as an argument when connecting a Signal in the ready method.

I solved it by importing the Model inside the ready method (in the Django docs they also do imports inside the ready method)

I leave a snippet below that shows what I did

# apps.py
from django.apps import AppConfig
from django.db.models.signals import post_save
from myproject.apps.core.utils import my_receiver



class CoreConfig(AppConfig):
    default_auto_field = "django.db.models.BigAutoField"
    name = "tracker.apps.core"

    def ready(self):
        from .models import MyModel # HERE IT IS! MOVING THE IMPORT HERE SOLVED IT

        post_save.connect(my_receiver, sender=MyModel)

In my case, python 3.8 and MacOS Ventura 13.4 this issue stemmed from context in used. In the beginning I used spawn and it gave the me the error. I changed it to fork and it worked.

Roughly, spawn creates a fresh child process that inherits the absolutely necessary resources and Django models is not one of those. fork though is identical to the parent and everything is loaded. However, fork may be unsafe e.g. it does not copy the parent process’s threads and thus deadlock may appear.