Basics of Python. Obviously, to create a desktop app using Python, you need to know the basics of Python. I hope you already know the basics of Python since you came here to take to the next level. So, I won’t waste so much time discussing Python basics. A quick, open source Python interpreter for the iOS platform. Create and test Python on the go. Whether you're just learning, practicing or creating a tiny snippet for your new project, the Python IDE can help you with all of that. Debug Quickly test and run your code in the synthetic Python console. Basics of Python. Obviously, to create a desktop app using Python, you need to know the basics of Python. I hope you already know the basics of Python since you came here to take to the next level. So, I won’t waste so much time discussing Python basics. Learn how to create Python GUIs for Windows, Mac and Linux with this hands-on PyQt5 tutorial. Build professional applications with PyQt5/PySide2 & Python 3 A simple Hello World! Application with Python and Qt5.
System tray applications (or menu bar applications) can be useful for making common functions or information available in a small number of clicks. For full desktop applications they're a useful shortcut to control apps without opening up the whole window.
Qt provides a simple interface for building cross-platform system tray (Windows) or menu bar (MacOS) apps.
Minimal example
Below is a minimal working example for showing an icon in the toolbar/system tray with a menu. The action in the menu isn't connected and so doesn't do anything yet.
You'll notice that there isn't a
QMainWindow , simply because we don't actually have any window to show. You can create a window as normal without affecting the behaviour of the system tray icon.
You'll need an icon for this example — I recommend the fugue icon set. What are examples of por apps for mac.
The default behaviour in Qt is to close an application once all the active windows have closed. This won't affect this toy example, but will be an issue in application where you do create windows and then close them. Setting `app.setQuitOnLastWindowClosed(False)` stops this and will ensure your application keeps running.
The provided icon shows up in the toolbar (you can see it on the left).
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The system tray icon shown on the menu bar (as a poo emoticon)
Clicking on the icon shows the added menu.
System tray icon with menu expanded
This application doesn't do anything yet, so in the next part we'll expand this example to create a mini colour-picker.
Color tray
Below is a more complete working example using the built in
QColorDialog from Qt to give a toolbar accessible color picker. The menu lets you choose to get the picked color as HTML-format #RRGGBB , rgb(R,G,B) or hsv(H,S,V) .
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As in the previous example there is no
QMainWindow for this example. The menu is created as before, but adding 3 actions for the different output formats. Each action is connected to a specific handler function for the format it represents. Each handler shows a dialog and, if a color is selected, copies that color to the clipboard in the given format.
As before, the icon appears in the toolbar.
Color-picker icon on the Mac menu bar (left hand side)
Clicking the icon shows a menu, from which you can select the format of image you want to return.
Options to return chosen colour (hex, RGB or HSV)
Once you've chosen the format, you'll see the standard Qt color picker window.
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PyQt provides access to system dialogs, such as this Mac colour picker
Select the colour you want and click OK. The chosen colour will be copied to the clipboard in the requested format. The formats available will product the following output:
Suggestions for improvements
One simple and nice improvement would be to make the previously-selected colours available to re-copy in other formats. You could do this by storing the colour result value from the existing menu. Then add 3 more options, which show (on the menu) their return values — clicking these just copies that value to the clipboard.
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This is an overview of the best tools and the best resources for buildingdesktop applications in Python.
First things first. You can build great desktop applications in Python, and someare widely used (like Dropbox). But you'll have to find your own way much morethan you would using Microsoft's or Apple's SDKs. The upside is that, with a bitof legwork to package it appropriately, it's quite feasible to write a Pythonapplication that works on all the major platforms.
GUI toolkits
The first thing you'll need to choose is a GUI toolkit. Install mac os on ubuntu.
A couple of alternatives I wouldn't recommend unless you have a reason to preferthem: GTK is popular on Linux, but itlooks ugly on other platforms. The older pygtkbindings have excellent documentation; the newer PyGObjectsystem, which supports recent versions of GTK and Python, doesn't (though it'sgetting better). wx seems to have a good community, but development is slow,and new projects that could have used it now mostly seem to pick Qt.
Packaging and Distribution
This is probably the roughest part of making an application in Python. You caneasily distribute tools for developers as Python packages to be installed usingpip, but end users don't generally have Python and pip already set up. Pythonpackages also can't depend on something like Qt. There are a number of ways topackage your application and its dependencies:
Linux packaging
Although some of the freeze tools can build Linux binaries, the preferred way todistribute software is to make a package containing just your application, whichhas dependencies on Python and the libraries your application uses. So yourpackage doesn't contain everything it needs, but it tells the package managerwhat other pieces it needs installed.
Unfortunately, the procedures for preparing these are pretty complex, and Linuxdistributions still don't have a common package format. The main ones are debpackages, used by Debian, Ubuntu and Mint, and rpm packages, used by Fedora andRed Hat. I don't know of a good, simple guide to packaging Python applicationsfor either - if you find one or write one, let me know.
You can get users to download and install your package, but if you want it toreceive updates through the package manager, you'll need to host it in arepository. Submitting your package to the distribution's main repositories makesit easiest for users to install, but it has to meet the distro's qualitystandards, and you generally can't push new feature releases to people except whenthey upgrade the whole distribution. Some distributions offer hosting forpersonal repos: Ubuntu's PPAs, or Fedora's Fedorapeople repositories. You canalso set up a repository on your own server.
If you don't want to think about all that, just make a tarball of your application,and explain to Linux users next to the download what it requires.
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