tkinter — Python interface to Tcl/Tk

Source code: Lib/tkinter/__init__.py

The tkinter package (“Tk interface”) is the standard Python interface to the Tcl/Tk GUI toolkit. Both Tk and tkinter are available on most Unix platforms, including macOS, as well as on Windows systems.

Running python -m tkinter from the command line should open a window demonstrating a simple Tk interface, letting you know that tkinter is properly installed on your system, and also showing what version of Tcl/Tk is installed, so you can read the Tcl/Tk documentation specific to that version.

See also

  • TkDocs

    Extensive tutorial on creating user interfaces with Tkinter. Explains key concepts, and illustrates recommended approaches using the modern API.

  • Tkinter 8.5 reference: a GUI for Python

    Reference documentation for Tkinter 8.5 detailing available classes, methods, and options.

Tcl/Tk Resources:

  • Tk commands

    Comprehensive reference to each of the underlying Tcl/Tk commands used by Tkinter.

  • Tcl/Tk Home Page

    Additional documentation, and links to Tcl/Tk core development.

Books:

Tkinter Modules

Support for Tkinter is spread across several modules. Most applications will need the main tkinter module, as well as the tkinter.ttk module, which provides the modern themed widget set and API:

from tkinter import *
from tkinter import ttk
class tkinter.Tk(screenName=None, baseName=None, className='Tk', useTk=True, sync=False, use=None)

Construct a toplevel Tk widget, which is usually the main window of an application, and initialize a Tcl interpreter for this widget. Each instance has its own associated Tcl interpreter.

The Tk class is typically instantiated using all default values. However, the following keyword arguments are currently recognized:

screenName

When given (as a string), sets the DISPLAY environment variable. (X11 only)

baseName

Name of the profile file. By default, baseName is derived from the program name (sys.argv[0]).

className

Name of the widget class. Used as a profile file and also as the name with which Tcl is invoked (argv0 in interp).

useTk

If True, initialize the Tk subsystem. The tkinter.Tcl() function sets this to False.

sync

If True, execute all X server commands synchronously, so that errors are reported immediately. Can be used for debugging. (X11 only)

use

Specifies the id of the window in which to embed the application, instead of it being created as an independent toplevel window. id must be specified in the same way as the value for the -use option for toplevel widgets (that is, it has a form like that returned by winfo_id()).

Note that on some platforms this will only work correctly if id refers to a Tk frame or toplevel that has its -container option enabled.

Tk reads and interprets profile files, named .className.tcl and .baseName.tcl, into the Tcl interpreter and calls exec() on the contents of .className.py and .baseName.py. The path for the profile files is the HOME environment variable or, if that isn’t defined, then os.curdir.

tk

The Tk application object created by instantiating Tk. This provides access to the Tcl interpreter. Each widget that is attached the same instance of Tk has the same value for its tk attribute.

master

The widget object that contains this widget. For Tk, the master is None because it is the main window. The terms master and parent are similar and sometimes used interchangeably as argument names; however, calling winfo_parent() returns a string of the widget name whereas master returns the object. parent/child reflects the tree-like relationship while master/slave reflects the container structure.

children

The immediate descendants of this widget as a dict with the child widget names as the keys and the child instance objects as the values.

tkinter.Tcl(screenName=None, baseName=None, className='Tk', useTk=False)

The Tcl() function is a factory function which creates an object much like that created by the Tk class, except that it does not initialize the Tk subsystem. This is most often useful when driving the Tcl interpreter in an environment where one doesn’t want to create extraneous toplevel windows, or where one cannot (such as Unix/Linux systems without an X server). An object created by the Tcl() object can have a Toplevel window created (and the Tk subsystem initialized) by calling its loadtk() method.

The modules that provide Tk support include:

tkinter

Main Tkinter module.

tkinter.colorchooser

Dialog to let the user choose a color.

tkinter.commondialog

Base class for the dialogs defined in the other modules listed here.

tkinter.filedialog

Common dialogs to allow the user to specify a file to open or save.

tkinter.font

Utilities to help work with fonts.

tkinter.messagebox

Access to standard Tk dialog boxes.

tkinter.scrolledtext

Text widget with a vertical scroll bar built in.

tkinter.simpledialog

Basic dialogs and convenience functions.

tkinter.ttk

Themed widget set introduced in Tk 8.5, providing modern alternatives for many of the classic widgets in the main tkinter module.

Additional modules:

_tkinter

A binary module that contains the low-level interface to Tcl/Tk. It is automatically imported by the main tkinter module, and should never be used directly by application programmers. It is usually a shared library (or DLL), but might in some cases be statically linked with the Python interpreter.

idlelib

Python’s Integrated Development and Learning Environment (IDLE). Based on tkinter.

tkinter.constants

Symbolic constants that can be used in place of strings when passing various parameters to Tkinter calls. Automatically imported by the main tkinter module.

tkinter.dnd

(experimental) Drag-and-drop support for tkinter. This will become deprecated when it is replaced with the Tk DND.

tkinter.tix

(deprecated) An older third-party Tcl/Tk package that adds several new widgets. Better alternatives for most can be found in tkinter.ttk.

turtle

Turtle graphics in a Tk window.

Tkinter Life Preserver

This section is not designed to be an exhaustive tutorial on either Tk or Tkinter. Rather, it is intended as a stop gap, providing some introductory orientation on the system.

Credits:

  • Tk was written by John Ousterhout while at Berkeley.

  • Tkinter was written by Steen Lumholt and Guido van Rossum.

  • This Life Preserver was written by Matt Conway at the University of Virginia.

  • The HTML rendering, and some liberal editing, was produced from a FrameMaker version by Ken Manheimer.

  • Fredrik Lundh elaborated and revised the class interface descriptions, to get them current with Tk 4.2.

  • Mike Clarkson converted the documentation to LaTeX, and compiled the User Interface chapter of the reference manual.

How To Use This Section

This section is designed in two parts: the first half (roughly) covers background material, while the second half can be taken to the keyboard as a handy reference.

When trying to answer questions of the form “how do I do blah”, it is often best to find out how to do “blah” in straight Tk, and then convert this back into the corresponding tkinter call. Python programmers can often guess at the correct Python command by looking at the Tk documentation. This means that in order to use Tkinter, you will have to know a little bit about Tk. This document can’t fulfill that role, so the best we can do is point you to the best documentation that exists. Here are some hints:

  • The authors strongly suggest getting a copy of the Tk man pages. Specifically, the man pages in the manN directory are most useful. The man3 man pages describe the C interface to the Tk library and thus are not especially helpful for script writers.

  • Addison-Wesley publishes a book called Tcl and the Tk Toolkit by John Ousterhout (ISBN 0-201-63337-X) which is a good introduction to Tcl and Tk for the novice. The book is not exhaustive, and for many details it defers to the man pages.

  • tkinter/__init__.py is a last resort for most, but can be a good place to go when nothing else makes sense.

A Simple Hello World Program

import tkinter as tk

class Application(tk.Frame):
    def __init__(self, master=None):
        super().__init__(master)
        self.master = master
        self.pack()
        self.create_widgets()

    def create_widgets(self):
        self.hi_there = tk.Button(self)
        self.hi_there["text"] = "Hello World\n(click me)"
        self.hi_there["command"] = self.say_hi
        self.hi_there.pack(side="top")

        self.quit = tk.Button(self, text="QUIT", fg="red",
                              command=self.master.destroy)
        self.quit.pack(side="bottom")

    def say_hi(self):
        print("hi there, everyone!")

root = tk.Tk()
app = Application(master=root)
app.mainloop()

A (Very) Quick Look at Tcl/Tk

The class hierarchy looks complicated, but in actual practice, application programmers almost always refer to the classes at the very bottom of the hierarchy.

Notes:

  • These classes are provided for the purposes of organizing certain functions under one namespace. They aren’t meant to be instantiated independently.

  • The Tk class is meant to be instantiated only once in an application. Application programmers need not instantiate one explicitly, the system creates one whenever any of the other classes are instantiated.

  • The Widget class is not meant to be instantiated, it is meant only for subclassing to make “real” widgets (in C++, this is called an ‘abstract class’).

To make use of this reference material, there will be times when you will need to know how to read short passages of Tk and how to identify the various parts of a Tk command. (See section Mapping Basic Tk into Tkinter for the tkinter equivalents of what’s below.)

Tk scripts are Tcl programs. Like all Tcl programs, Tk scripts are just lists of tokens separated by spaces. A Tk widget is just its class, the options that help configure it, and the actions that make it do useful things.

To make a widget in Tk, the command is always of the form:

classCommand newPathname options
classCommand

denotes which kind of widget to make (a button, a label, a menu…)

newPathname

is the new name for this widget. All names in Tk must be unique. To help enforce this, widgets in Tk are named with pathnames, just like files in a file system. The top level widget, the root, is called . (period) and children are delimited by more periods. For example, .myApp.controlPanel.okButton might be the name of a widget.

options

configure the widget’s appearance and in some cases, its behavior. The options come in the form of a list of flags and values. Flags are preceded by a ‘-‘, like Unix shell command flags, and values are put in quotes if they are more than one word.

For example:

button   .fred   -fg red -text "hi there"
   ^       ^     \______________________/
   |       |                |
 class    new            options
command  widget  (-opt val -opt val ...)

Once created, the pathname to the widget becomes a new command. This new widget command is the programmer’s handle for getting the new widget to perform some action. In C, you’d express this as someAction(fred, someOptions), in C++, you would express this as fred.someAction(someOptions), and in Tk, you say:

.fred someAction someOptions

Note that the object name, .fred, starts with a dot.

As you’d expect, the legal values for someAction will depend on the widget’s class: .fred disable works if fred is a button (fred gets greyed out), but does not work if fred is a label (disabling of labels is not supported in Tk).

The legal values of someOptions is action dependent. Some actions, like disable, require no arguments, others, like a text-entry box’s delete command, would need arguments to specify what range of text to delete.

Mapping Basic Tk into Tkinter

Class commands in Tk correspond to class constructors in Tkinter.

button .fred                =====>  fred = Button()

The master of an object is implicit in the new name given to it at creation time. In Tkinter, masters are specified explicitly.

button .panel.fred          =====>  fred = Button(panel)

The configuration options in Tk are given in lists of hyphened tags followed by values. In Tkinter, options are specified as keyword-arguments in the instance constructor, and keyword-args for configure calls or as instance indices, in dictionary style, for established instances. See section Setting Options on setting options.

button .fred -fg red        =====>  fred = Button(panel, fg="red")
.fred configure -fg red     =====>  fred["fg"] = red
                            OR ==>  fred.config(fg="red")

In Tk, to perform an action on a widget, use the widget name as a command, and follow it with an action name, possibly with arguments (options). In Tkinter, you call methods on the class instance to invoke actions on the widget. The actions (methods) that a given widget can perform are listed in tkinter/__init__.py.

.fred invoke                =====>  fred.invoke()

To give a widget to the packer (geometry manager), you call pack with optional arguments. In Tkinter, the Pack class holds all this functionality, and the various forms of the pack command are implemented as methods. All widgets in tkinter are subclassed from the Packer, and so inherit all the packing methods. See the tkinter.tix module documentation for additional information on the Form geometry manager.

pack .fred -side left       =====>  fred.pack(side="left")

Handy Reference

Setting Options

Options control things like the color and border width of a widget. Options can be set in three ways:

At object creation time, using keyword arguments
fred = Button(self, fg="red", bg="blue")
After object creation, treating the option name like a dictionary index
fred["fg"] = "red"
fred["bg"] = "blue"
Use the config() method to update multiple attrs subsequent to object creation
fred.config(fg="red", bg="blue")

For a complete explanation of a given option and its behavior, see the Tk man pages for the widget in question.

Note that the man pages list “STANDARD OPTIONS” and “WIDGET SPECIFIC OPTIONS” for each widget. The former is a list of options that are common to many widgets, the latter are the options that are idiosyncratic to that particular widget. The Standard Options are documented on the options(3) man page.

No distinction between standard and widget-specific options is made in this document. Some options don’t apply to some kinds of widgets. Whether a given widget responds to a particular option depends on the class of the widget; buttons have a command option, labels do not.

The options supported by a given widget are listed in that widget’s man page, or can be queried at runtime by calling the config() method without arguments, or by calling the keys() method on that widget. The return value of these calls is a dictionary whose key is the name of the option as a string (for example, 'relief') and whose values are 5-tuples.

Some options, like bg are synonyms for common options with long names (bg is shorthand for “background”). Passing the config() method the name of a shorthand option will return a 2-tuple, not 5-tuple. The 2-tuple passed back will contain the name of the synonym and the “real” option (such as ('bg', 'background')).

Index

Meaning

Example

0

option name

'relief'

1

option name for database lookup

'relief'

2

option class for database lookup

'Relief'

3

default value

'raised'

4

current value

'groove'

Example:

>>> print(fred.config())
{'relief': ('relief', 'relief', 'Relief', 'raised', 'groove')}

Of course, the dictionary printed will include all the options available and their values. This is meant only as an example.

The Packer

The packer is one of Tk’s geometry-management mechanisms. Geometry managers are used to specify the relative positioning of widgets within their container - their mutual master. In contrast to the more cumbersome placer (which is used less commonly, and we do not cover here), the packer takes qualitative relationship specification - above, to the left of, filling, etc - and works everything out to determine the exact placement coordinates for you.

The size of any master widget is determined by the size of the “slave widgets” inside. The packer is used to control where slave widgets appear inside the master into which they are packed. You can pack widgets into frames, and frames into other frames, in order to achieve the kind of layout you desire. Additionally, the arrangement is dynamically adjusted to accommodate incremental changes to the configuration, once it is packed.

Note that widgets do not appear until they have had their geometry specified with a geometry manager. It’s a common early mistake to leave out the geometry specification, and then be surprised when the widget is created but nothing appears. A widget will appear only after it has had, for example, the packer’s pack() method applied to it.

The pack() method can be called with keyword-option/value pairs that control where the widget is to appear within its container, and how it is to behave when the main application window is resized. Here are some examples:

fred.pack()                     # defaults to side = "top"
fred.pack(side="left")
fred.pack(expand=1)

Packer Options

For more extensive information on the packer and the options that it can take, see the man pages and page 183 of John Ousterhout’s book.

anchor

Anchor type. Denotes where the packer is to place each slave in its parcel.

expand

Boolean, 0 or 1.

fill

Legal values: 'x', 'y', 'both', 'none'.

ipadx and ipady

A distance - designating internal padding on each side of the slave widget.

padx and pady

A distance - designating external padding on each side of the slave widget.

side

Legal values are: 'left', 'right', 'top', 'bottom'.

Coupling Widget Variables

The current-value setting of some widgets (like text entry widgets) can be connected directly to application variables by using special options. These options are variable, textvariable, onvalue, offvalue, and value. This connection works both ways: if the variable changes for any reason, the widget it’s connected to will be updated to reflect the new value.

Unfortunately, in the current implementation of tkinter it is not possible to hand over an arbitrary Python variable to a widget through a variable or textvariable option. The only kinds of variables for which this works are variables that are subclassed from a class called Variable, defined in tkinter.

There are many useful subclasses of Variable already defined: StringVar, IntVar, DoubleVar, and BooleanVar. To read the current value of such a variable, call the get() method on it, and to change its value you call the set() method. If you follow this protocol, the widget will always track the value of the variable, with no further intervention on your part.

For example:

import tkinter as tk

class App(tk.Frame):
    def __init__(self, master):
        super().__init__(master)
        self.pack()

        self.entrythingy = tk.Entry()
        self.entrythingy.pack()

        # Create the application variable.
        self.contents = tk.StringVar()
        # Set it to some value.
        self.contents.set("this is a variable")
        # Tell the entry widget to watch this variable.
        self.entrythingy["textvariable"] = self.contents

        # Define a callback for when the user hits return.
        # It prints the current value of the variable.
        self.entrythingy.bind('<Key-Return>',
                             self.print_contents)

    def print_contents(self, event):
        print("Hi. The current entry content is:",
              self.contents.get())

root = tk.Tk()
myapp = App(root)
myapp.mainloop()

The Window Manager

In Tk, there is a utility command, wm, for interacting with the window manager. Options to the wm command allow you to control things like titles, placement, icon bitmaps, and the like. In tkinter, these commands have been implemented as methods on the Wm class. Toplevel widgets are subclassed from the Wm class, and so can call the Wm methods directly.

To get at the toplevel window that contains a given widget, you can often just refer to the widget’s master. Of course if the widget has been packed inside of a frame, the master won’t represent a toplevel window. To get at the toplevel window that contains an arbitrary widget, you can call the _root() method. This method begins with an underscore to denote the fact that this function is part of the implementation, and not an interface to Tk functionality.

Here are some examples of typical usage:

import tkinter as tk

class App(tk.Frame):
    def __init__(self, master=None):
        super().__init__(master)
        self.pack()

# create the application
myapp = App()

#
# here are method calls to the window manager class
#
myapp.master.title("My Do-Nothing Application")
myapp.master.maxsize(1000, 400)

# start the program
myapp.mainloop()

Tk Option Data Types

anchor

Legal values are points of the compass: "n", "ne", "e", "se", "s", "sw", "w", "nw", and also "center".

bitmap

There are eight built-in, named bitmaps: 'error', 'gray25', 'gray50', 'hourglass', 'info', 'questhead', 'question', 'warning'. To specify an X bitmap filename, give the full path to the file, preceded with an @, as in "@/usr/contrib/bitmap/gumby.bit".

boolean

You can pass integers 0 or 1 or the strings "yes" or "no".

callback

This is any Python function that takes no arguments. For example:

def print_it():
    print("hi there")
fred["command"] = print_it
color

Colors can be given as the names of X colors in the rgb.txt file, or as strings representing RGB values in 4 bit: "#RGB", 8 bit: "#RRGGBB", 12 bit: "#RRRGGGBBB", or 16 bit: "#RRRRGGGGBBBB" ranges, where R,G,B here represent any legal hex digit. See page 160 of Ousterhout’s book for details.

cursor

The standard X cursor names from cursorfont.h can be used, without the XC_ prefix. For example to get a hand cursor (XC_hand2), use the string "hand2". You can also specify a bitmap and mask file of your own. See page 179 of Ousterhout’s book.

distance

Screen distances can be specified in either pixels or absolute distances. Pixels are given as numbers and absolute distances as strings, with the trailing character denoting units: c for centimetres, i for inches, m for millimetres, p for printer’s points. For example, 3.5 inches is expressed as "3.5i".

font

Tk uses a list font name format, such as {courier 10 bold}. Font sizes with positive numbers are measured in points; sizes with negative numbers are measured in pixels.

geometry

This is a string of the form widthxheight, where width and height are measured in pixels for most widgets (in characters for widgets displaying text). For example: fred["geometry"] = "200x100".

justify

Legal values are the strings: "left", "center", "right", and "fill".

region

This is a string with four space-delimited elements, each of which is a legal distance (see above). For example: "2 3 4 5" and "3i 2i 4.5i 2i" and "3c 2c 4c 10.43c" are all legal regions.

relief

Determines what the border style of a widget will be. Legal values are: "raised", "sunken", "flat", "groove", and "ridge".

scrollcommand

This is almost always the set() method of some scrollbar widget, but can be any widget method that takes a single argument.

wrap

Must be one of: "none", "char", or "word".

Bindings and Events

The bind method from the widget command allows you to watch for certain events and to have a callback function trigger when that event type occurs. The form of the bind method is:

def bind(self, sequence, func, add=''):

where:

sequence

is a string that denotes the target kind of event. (See the bind man page and page 201 of John Ousterhout’s book for details).

func

is a Python function, taking one argument, to be invoked when the event occurs. An Event instance will be passed as the argument. (Functions deployed this way are commonly known as callbacks.)

add

is optional, either '' or '+'. Passing an empty string denotes that this binding is to replace any other bindings that this event is associated with. Passing a '+' means that this function is to be added to the list of functions bound to this event type.

For example:

def turn_red(self, event):
    event.widget["activeforeground"] = "red"

self.button.bind("<Enter>", self.turn_red)

Notice how the widget field of the event is being accessed in the turn_red() callback. This field contains the widget that caught the X event. The following table lists the other event fields you can access, and how they are denoted in Tk, which can be useful when referring to the Tk man pages.

Tk

Tkinter Event Field

Tk

Tkinter Event Field

%f

focus

%A

char

%h

height

%E

send_event

%k

keycode

%K

keysym

%s

state

%N

keysym_num

%t

time

%T

type

%w

width

%W

widget

%x

x

%X

x_root

%y

y

%Y

y_root

The index Parameter

A number of widgets require “index” parameters to be passed. These are used to point at a specific place in a Text widget, or to particular characters in an Entry widget, or to particular menu items in a Menu widget.

Entry widget indexes (index, view index, etc.)

Entry widgets have options that refer to character positions in the text being displayed. You can use these tkinter functions to access these special points in text widgets:

Text widget indexes

The index notation for Text widgets is very rich and is best described in the Tk man pages.

Menu indexes (menu.invoke(), menu.entryconfig(), etc.)

Some options and methods for menus manipulate specific menu entries. Anytime a menu index is needed for an option or a parameter, you may pass in:

  • an integer which refers to the numeric position of the entry in the widget, counted from the top, starting with 0;

  • the string "active", which refers to the menu position that is currently under the cursor;

  • the string "last" which refers to the last menu item;

  • An integer preceded by @, as in @6, where the integer is interpreted as a y pixel coordinate in the menu’s coordinate system;

  • the string "none", which indicates no menu entry at all, most often used with menu.activate() to deactivate all entries, and finally,

  • a text string that is pattern matched against the label of the menu entry, as scanned from the top of the menu to the bottom. Note that this index type is considered after all the others, which means that matches for menu items labelled last, active, or none may be interpreted as the above literals, instead.

Images

Images of different formats can be created through the corresponding subclass of tkinter.Image:

  • BitmapImage for images in XBM format.

  • PhotoImage for images in PGM, PPM, GIF and PNG formats. The latter is supported starting with Tk 8.6.

Either type of image is created through either the file or the data option (other options are available as well).

The image object can then be used wherever an image option is supported by some widget (e.g. labels, buttons, menus). In these cases, Tk will not keep a reference to the image. When the last Python reference to the image object is deleted, the image data is deleted as well, and Tk will display an empty box wherever the image was used.

See also

The Pillow package adds support for formats such as BMP, JPEG, TIFF, and WebP, among others.

File Handlers

Tk allows you to register and unregister a callback function which will be called from the Tk mainloop when I/O is possible on a file descriptor. Only one handler may be registered per file descriptor. Example code:

import tkinter
widget = tkinter.Tk()
mask = tkinter.READABLE | tkinter.WRITABLE
widget.tk.createfilehandler(file, mask, callback)
...
widget.tk.deletefilehandler(file)

This feature is not available on Windows.

Since you don’t know how many bytes are available for reading, you may not want to use the BufferedIOBase or TextIOBase read() or readline() methods, since these will insist on reading a predefined number of bytes. For sockets, the recv() or recvfrom() methods will work fine; for other files, use raw reads or os.read(file.fileno(), maxbytecount).

Widget.tk.createfilehandler(file, mask, func)

Registers the file handler callback function func. The file argument may either be an object with a fileno() method (such as a file or socket object), or an integer file descriptor. The mask argument is an ORed combination of any of the three constants below. The callback is called as follows:

callback(file, mask)
Widget.tk.deletefilehandler(file)

Unregisters a file handler.

tkinter.READABLE
tkinter.WRITABLE
tkinter.EXCEPTION

Constants used in the mask arguments.