
In basic Python, we deal with console-based applications, where the output of our Python program is displayed on the terminal with a black background and white text. What if you want to make an interactive and graphical application using the Python programming language? For that, you need Python GUI frameworks and libraries.
With the help of Python GUI frameworks, we can create graphical applications that are more interactive and robust as compared to a console-based application. If you want to be a successful Python software developer, you need to learn some of the best and most widely used Python GUI frameworks.
Check out these best Python GUI frameworks to do advanced development with the popular programming language and also learn how to integrate your code logic with GUI frameworks.
Best Python GUI Frameworks
Here in this article, we have listed the top Python GUI frameworks you can explore in 2022 if you want to create beautiful and interactive software using Python or just want to upgrade your basic python skills to the intermediate or advanced level. Following are our pick of the five best GUI frameworks in Python:
- Kivy
- Tkinter
- PyQt
- PyGame
- WxPython
1. Kivy
Kivy is the most powerful and widely used Python GUI framework. It is an open-source framework. Thus, you can download it for free and use it to build any type of software or application. It is a cross-platform framework that allows you to create applications that can run on multiple devices, including Android, iOS, GNU/Linux, Windows, and macOS.
It is the most popular Python framework for building Android applications. Kivy is also capable of building Raspberry Pi software. Moreover, it comes with many inbuilt extensions and widgets, such as a mouse, keywords, TUIO, and multi-touch. If you are looking for a robust Python GUI framework, then you can go with Kivy. To make things even better, it flaunts well-written documentation.
Getting Started with Kivy
It’s very easy to install Kivy with Anaconda. Use the following command to do so:
$ conda install kivy -c conda-forge
Click here to know how to install kivy using pip.
Kivy Example
from kivy.app import App from kivy.uix.button import Button class MyApp(App): def build(self): return Button(text='TechGeekBuzz') MyApp().run()
2. Tkinter
Tkinter is another most commonly used GUI framework. In fact, it is the standard GUI framework for Python. Also, many Python data visualization libraries use this framework to print graphs and charts. It is a very simple framework and is highly used by Python intermediate developers to build robust GUI applications.
Its applications can run on any platform that supports Python. Additionally, Tkinter comes with many inbuilt modules and widgets that will help you create interactive components, such as buttons, labels, message boxes, frames, and colorchooser.
Getting Started with Tkinter
You can install Tkinter using the following pip command:
pip install tkinter
Tkinter Example
import tkinter window = tkinter.Tk() window.title("TechGeekBuzz") button = tkinter.Button(window, text='press', width= 20) button.pack() window.mainloop()
3. PyQT
Built on top of the popular C++ Qt GUI framework, PyQT is a popular and powerful cross-platform Python GUI library. Yes, it is a library and not a GUI framework. Nonetheless, with the help of this library, we can build GUI applications using Python. The latest version of PyQT is PyQt5, which is an upgraded version of the popular PyQt4.
PyQT comes with a wide range of inbuilt Python modules. It also contains modules such as QtXML, QtSVG, and QtSql for XML, SVG, and SQL-related files.
Getting Started with PyQt
Install PyQt on your Python environment using the following pip command:
pip install PyQt5
PyQt Example
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QLabel my_app = QApplication([]) label = QLabel('Hello World TechGeekBuzz!') label.show() label.show()
4. PyGame
PyGame is a well-known Python library for building desktop-based GUI games and applications. It is capable of building cross-platform Python-based video games. PyGame comes with a wide range of built-in graphical and sound libraries that help developers build interactive and powerful games.
It uses the Simple Direct Media Layer (SDL) library, which allows developers to create real-time computer games with the optimization of low-level C programming language and derivation. PyGame-based applications and games can also run on Android devices with the help of PyGame Subset for Android (PGS4A).
Getting Started with PyGame
Use the following command to install PyGame using pip:
pip install pygame
PyGame Example
import pygame window= pygame.display.set_mode((500,400)) done = False while not done: for event in pygame.event.get(): if event.type == pygame.QUIT: done = True #red window background window.fill((255, 0, 0)) # green circle pygame.draw.circle(window, (0, 255, 0), (250, 250), 75) pygame.display.flip()
5. wxPython
We’ll wind up our list of the best Python GUI frameworks with wxPython. Written in C++, wxPython is a cross-platform Python GUI API. It allows Python developers to build interactive and robust graphical programs. It contains many Python extension modules that wrap around GUI components from the popular wxWidgets library.
wxPython is one of the popular Python GUI APIs and a top alternative for the standard GUI Tkinter library in Python. It is an open-source API, which means everyone is free to use it for the deployment and development of Python-based GUI applications.
Getting Started with wxPython
Use the following pip install command to install wxPython in your Python environment:
pip install wxPython
wxPython Example
import wx my_app = wx.App(False) window = wx.Frame(None, title="TechGeekBuzz! Hello World") window.Show(True) my_app.MainLoop()
Conclusion
There are not many cross-platform GUI frameworks and libraries in Python. Although Python is doing great in other domains such as web development, data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, in mobile and desktop-based application development, Python is still behind other programming languages. You can learn and explore these GUI Python libraries and frameworks for fun and increase your python skill.
Similar articles that might interest you:
- How to use split in Python?
- Invalid Syntax Python
- How to update all Python Packages?
- Python Absolute Value
- How to loop with indexes in Python?
- Python Round to Whole Numbers
- How to Import an Excel File into Python using Pandas?
- Python Sort a Dictionary
- How to Install Python 3 on Ubuntu 18.04 or 20.04
- Print without newline in Python
May I suggest Dear PyGui, a new fast, modern and cross-platform (Windowns, Linux, MacOS) GUI framework with an MIT license.
https://github.com/hoffstadt/DearPyGui