diff --git a/.github/workflows/unit_tests.yml b/.github/workflows/unit_tests.yml
index 79cafad4..631e7878 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/unit_tests.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/unit_tests.yml
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ jobs:
       - name: Install dependencies
         run: |
           python -m pip install --upgrade pip
-          pip install .
+          pip install .[extras]
           pip install pytest pytest-timeout pytest-cov
 
       - name: Test Utils
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 0ed232ae..00000000
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,9 +0,0 @@
-phoneme_guesser
-mycroft-messagebus-client
-colour
-inflection
-pexpect
-requests
-json_database
-kthread
-pyxdg
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/requirements/extras.txt b/requirements/extras.txt
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..355f49c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/requirements/extras.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+colour~=0.1
+rapidfuzz~=1.0
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/requirements/requirements.txt b/requirements/requirements.txt
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..590599af
--- /dev/null
+++ b/requirements/requirements.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+mycroft-messagebus-client~=0.9.1,!=0.9.2,!=0.9.3
+inflection~=0.5
+pexpect~=4.8
+requests~=2.26
+json_database~=0.6
+kthread~=0.2
+pyxdg~=0.27
+PyYAML~=5.4
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index f0a845ae..63bf5daf 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -1,5 +1,20 @@
+import os
 from setuptools import setup
 
+BASEDIR = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))
+
+
+def required(requirements_file):
+    """ Read requirements file and remove comments and empty lines. """
+    with open(os.path.join(BASEDIR, requirements_file), 'r') as f:
+        requirements = f.read().splitlines()
+        if 'MYCROFT_LOOSE_REQUIREMENTS' in os.environ:
+            print('USING LOOSE REQUIREMENTS!')
+            requirements = [r.replace('==', '>=').replace('~=', '>=') for r in requirements]
+        return [pkg for pkg in requirements
+                if pkg.strip() and not pkg.startswith("#")]
+
+
 setup(
     name='ovos_utils',
     version='0.0.12a10',
@@ -13,18 +28,9 @@
               'ovos_utils.skills',
               'ovos_utils.lang'],
     url='https://github.com/OpenVoiceOS/ovos_utils',
-    install_requires=[
-        "mycroft-messagebus-client",
-        "pexpect",
-        "pyxdg",
-        "PyYAML",
-        "kthread",
-        "json_database",
-        "requests",
-        "colour",
-        "inflection"],
+    install_requires=required("requirements/requirements.txt"),
     extras_require={
-        "extras": ["phoneme_guesser", "colour", "rapidfuzz"]
+        "extras": required("requirements/extras.txt")
     },
     include_package_data=True,
     license='Apache',