CustomTkinter

With CustomTkinter you can create modern looking user interfaces in python with tkinter. CustomTkinter is a tkinter extension which provides extra ui-elements like the CTkButton, which can be used like a normal tkinter.Button, but can be customized with a border and round edges.

CustomTkinter also supports a light and dark theme, which can either be set manually or get controlled by the system appearance mode.

Installation

To use CustomTkinter, just place the /customtkinter folder from this repository next to your program, or install the module with pip:

pip3 install customtkinter

Update existing installation: pip3 install customtkinter --upgrade
(from time to time bugs are getting fixed and new features are added)

PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/customtkinter/

Example program (simple button):

To test customtkinter you can try this simple example with only a single button:

import tkinter
import customtkinter  # <- import the CustomTkinter module

root_tk = tkinter.Tk()  # create the Tk window like you normally do
root_tk.geometry("400x240")
root_tk.title("CustomTkinter Test")

def button_function():
    print("button pressed")

# Use CTkButton instead of tkinter Button
button = customtkinter.CTkButton(master=root_tk, corner_radius=10, command=button_function)
button.place(relx=0.5, rely=0.5, anchor=tkinter.CENTER)

root_tk.mainloop()

which gives the following:

Use custom colors and shapes:

If you dont specify any colors, customtkinter uses the standard blue color in the light theme. You can change the color theme to dark by calling customtkinter.set_appearance_mode("Dark"). If you specify custom colors for CustomTkinter elements, the you can either use a tuple in the form: (light_color, dark_color). Or you can set a single color which will be used in light and dark theme.

customtkinter.set_appearance_mode("Dark") # Other: "Light", "System"

button = customtkinter.CTkButton(master=root_tk,
                                 fg_color=("black", "lightgray"),  # <- tuple color for light and dark theme
                                 text="CTkButton",
                                 command=button_event)
button.place(relx=0.5, rely=0.5, anchor=tkinter.CENTER)

How to use macOS dark mode?

If you have a python version with Tcl/Tk >= 8.6.9, then you can enable the macOS darkmode. Currently only the anaconda python versions have Tcl/Tk >= 8.6.9. So if you want a dark window titlebar, you have to install anaconda python version or miniconda.

import tkinter
import customtkinter

customtkinter.enable_macos_darkmode()
customtkinter.set_appearance_mode("System")

... the program ...

customtkinter.disable_macos_darkmode()

which gives the following with the above simple button program:

If you set the appearance mode to "System", it should change with the System mode:

Advanced example with multiple CTkFrames

Here I used the customtkinter.enable_macos_darkmode() command to enable the macOS darkmode, and used multpiple CTkFrames. It has some kind of a menu on the left side, and I used all CustomTkinter elements there are at the moment.Maybe this is a good reference if you want to create your own application with this library. (Code: /complex_example.py)

With macOS darkmode turned on, it looks like this:

Otherwise it looks like this:

But can also customize it by yourself. Here I changed the main colors and removed the round corners, and added a border to the buttons:

CustomTkinter on Windows/Linux

All elements of Customtkinter are drawn on the tkinter.Canvas. But the Tkinter canvas supports antialiasing only on macOS, so on Windows and Linux the elements are rendered in a much worse quality. So you have to experiment with the corner_radius and look when the rounded corners look best. I tried to design the too complex example programs so that they also look acceptable on Windows. Maybe you can use the parameters for corner_radius and width for your program as well.

Example 1:examples/complex_example.py

Example 2: examples/complex_example_other_style.py

CTkButton with images

It's also possible to put an image on a CTkButton. You just have to pass a PhotoImage object to the CTkButton with the argument image. If you want no text at all you have to set text="" or with the compound option you can specify how to position both the text and image at once. You can find an example program ( /simple_test_images.py ), where I created two buttons with a bell and a settings image on them:

Documentation - CustomTkinter Elements

CTkButton

Examle Code:

def button_event():
    print("button pressed")

button = customtkinter.CTkButton(master=root_tk,
                                 text="CTkButton",
                                 command=button_event,
                                 width=120,
                                 height=32,
                                 border_width=0,
                                 corner_radius=8)
button.place(relx=0.5, rely=0.5, anchor=tkinter.CENTER)

CTkButton.set_text(new_text)
CTkButton.set_image(new_image)
CTkButton.configure(text=new_text)
CTkButton.configure(bg_color=new_bg_color,
                    fg_color=new_fg_color,
                    hover_color=new_hover_color,
                    text_color=new_text_color)
CTkButton.configure(state=tkinter.DISABLED)
CTkButton.configure(state=tkinter.NORMAL)
button_state = CTkButton.state

CTkLabel

Example Code:

label = customtkinter.CTkLabel(master=root_tk,
                               text="CTkLabel",
                               width=120,
                               height=25,
                               corner_radius=8)
label.place(relx=0.5, rely=0.5, anchor=tkinter.CENTER)

CTkLabel.configure(text=new_text)
CTkLabel.configure(fg_color=new_fg_color,
                   bg_color=new_bg_color,
                   text_color=new_text_color)

CTkEntry

Example Code:

entry = customtkinter.CTkEntry(master=root_tk,
                               width=120,
                               height=25,
                               corner_radius=10)
entry.place(relx=0.5, rely=0.5, anchor=tkinter.CENTER)

text = entry.get()

CTkEntry.delete(...)  # standard tkinter Entry...
CTkEntry.insert(...)
text = CTkEntry.get()

CTkCheckBox

Examle Code:

checkbox = customtkinter.CTkCheckBox(master=root_tk,
                                     text="CTkCheckBox")
checkbox.place(relx=0.5, rely=0.5, anchor=tkinter.CENTER)

CTkCheckBox.get()  # 1 or 0 (checked or not checked)
CTkCheckBox.select()  # turns on checkbox
CTkCheckBox.deselect()  # turns off checkbox
CTkCheckBox.toggle()  # change check state of checkbox
CTkCheckBox.configure(text=new_text)
CTkCheckBox.configure(bg_color=new_bg_color,
                      fg_color=new_fg_color,
                      hover_color=new_hover_color,
                      text_color=new_text_color)
CTkCheckBox.configure(state=tkinter.DISABLED)
CTkCheckBox.configure(state=tkinter.NORMAL)
checkbox_state = CTkCheckBox.state

CTkSlider

Example Code:

def slider_event(value):
    print(value)

slider = customtkinter.CTkSlider(master=root_tk,
                                 width=160,
                                 height=16,
                                 border_width=5.5,
                                 from_=0,
                                 to=100,
                                 command=slider_event)
slider.place(relx=0.5, rely=0.5, anchor=tkinter.CENTER)

value = CTkSlider.get()
CTkSlider.set(value)

CTkProgressBar

Example Code:

progressbar = customtkinter.CTkProgressBar(master=root_tk,
                                           width=160,
                                           height=20,
                                           border_width=5)
progressbar.place(relx=0.5, rely=0.5, anchor=tkinter.CENTER)

progressbar.set(value)

CTkFrame

Example Code:

frame = customtkinter.CTkFrame(master=root_tk,
                               width=200,
                               height=200,
                               corner_radius=10)
frame.place(relx=0.5, rely=0.5, anchor=tkinter.CENTER)

Special commands

Change appearance mode:

customtkinter.set_appearance_mode("Light")
customtkinter.set_appearance_mode("Dark")
customtkinter.set_appearance_mode("System")

print(customtkinter.get_appearance_mode())

Use macOS darkmode window style:

customtkinter.enable_macos_darkmode()  # get darkmode window style
customtkinter.disable_macos_darkmode()  # disable darkmode (important!)

If you dont use root_tk.mainloop(), then you have to deactivate the threaded search for a change of the system appearance mode, and do it yourself in your main loop where you call root_tk.update().

customtkinter.deactivate_threading()  # call this at the beginning
customtkinter.update_appearance_mode()  # then call this in the loop