This article covers the most popular GUI Frameworks in Python.
One of Python’s strongest selling points is the vast number of GUI libraries available for GUI development. GUI development can be a tricky task, but thanks to the tools these Python GUI frameworks provide us, things become much simpler.
While some of the below GUI libraries are similar and directly compete with each other, each library has it’s own pros and cons. Sometimes you have special libraries designed for a specific situation, like Kivy is for touchscreen devices. So you don’t have to learn just one.
GUI Frameworks in Python
There are a large number of GUI frameworks in Python and we couldn’t possibly cover all of them. Hence we’ll just be discussing 5 of the most popular and important GUI frameworks in Python.
Tkinter GUI
I decided to start with Tkinter as it’s probably the oldest and most well known GUI framework in Python.
Tkinter was released in 1991 and quickly gained popularity due to its simplicity and ease of use compared to other GUI toolkits at the time. In fact, Tkinter is now included in the standard Python Library, meaning you don’t have to download and install it separately.
Other plus points include the fact that Tkinter has a pretty small memory footprint and a quick start up time. If you were to convert a Tkinter application into an exe with something like pyinstaller, it’s size would smaller than the other GUI library equivalents.
The only downsides to Tkinter are it’s rather outdated and old design. If you’re goal is to create a sleek and modern-looking GUI, Tkinter probably isn’t the best choice. Another possible downside is that Tkinter has fewer “special” widgets than the others, such as a VideoPlayer widget. Such widgets are used rarely, but still important.
You can begin learning it with our very own Tkinter Tutorial series.