How To Create A Menu In Python Tkinter

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a menu for your application using Python Tkinter.

Menus are a crucial part of any graphical user interface (GUI) since they provide a quick and easy way for users to navigate through your application. We will go through the process step-by-step so that you can create stylish and functional menus for your applications.

Step 1: Install and import Tkinter

First, we need to make sure that Tkinter is installed on your system, as it comes pre-installed with Python 2.7.x and Python 3.1 onwards, making it the standard library for creating GUIs with Python. If you are using an older version of Python, you can install it using the following command:

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pip install tkinter

Once installed, we can import the necessary components from the Tkinter library:

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from tkinter import Tk, Menu

Step 2: Create a window and menu bar

To make a menu, we need to first create a window using Tkinter. Then, we create a menu bar (Menu) instance that will host our menus:

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# Create a window
root = Tk()
root.title("Tkinter Menu Example")
 
# Create a menu bar
menu_bar = Menu(root)
root.config(menu=menu_bar)

Step 3: Create and add menus

Next, we will create individual menus (such as File, Edit, and Help) as Menu instances and add them to the menu bar:

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# Create the menus
file_menu = Menu(menu_bar)
edit_menu = Menu(menu_bar)
help_menu = Menu(menu_bar)
 
# Add the menus to the menu bar
menu_bar.add_cascade(label="File", menu=file_menu)
menu_bar.add_cascade(label="Edit", menu=edit_menu)
menu_bar.add_cascade(label="Help", menu=help_menu)

Step 4: Add menu items

Now that we have our menus, we can add menu items (such as Open, Save, and Exit) and associate actions or commands with them:

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# Add items to the File menu
file_menu.add_command(label="New")
file_menu.add_command(label="Open")
file_menu.add_command(label="Save")
file_menu.add_separator()
file_menu.add_command(label="Exit", command=root.quit)
 
# Add items to the Edit menu
edit_menu.add_command(label="Undo")
edit_menu.add_command(label="Redo")
 
# Add items to the Help menu
help_menu.add_command(label="About")

Step 5: Main loop

Finally, let’s start the main loop of our application to make the window and menu visible:

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root.mainloop()

The resulting menu should look like this:

File | Edit | Help

Full Code

Here is the full code for creating a menu in Python Tkinter:

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from tkinter import Tk, Menu
 
# Create a window
root = Tk()
root.title("Tkinter Menu Example")
 
# Create a menu bar
menu_bar = Menu(root)
root.config(menu=menu_bar)
 
# Create the menus
file_menu = Menu(menu_bar)
edit_menu = Menu(menu_bar)
help_menu = Menu(menu_bar)
 
# Add the menus to the menu bar
menu_bar.add_cascade(label="File", menu=file_menu)
menu_bar.add_cascade(label="Edit", menu=edit_menu)
menu_bar.add_cascade(label="Help", menu=help_menu)
 
# Add items to the File menu
file_menu.add_command(label="New")
file_menu.add_command(label="Open")
file_menu.add_command(label="Save")
file_menu.add_separator()
file_menu.add_command(label="Exit", command=root.quit)
 
# Add items to the Edit menu
edit_menu.add_command(label="Undo")
edit_menu.add_command(label="Redo")
 
# Add items to the Help menu
help_menu.add_command(label="About")
 
root.mainloop()

Output

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned how to create a menu using Python Tkinter. By following these steps, you can easily create functional and visually appealing menus for your applications.

With a little creativity and some more advanced functionality, you can create complex and intuitive menu systems to enhance the usability of your applications.