Creating and animating buttons and icons in Python using QPushButtons Iconify with PyQt PySide for a Modern UI design

In this tutorial, we will learn how to build and animate buttons and icons in Python using PyQt or PySide. We will specifically focus on using the QPushButtons class to create buttons with custom icons and implement animations to make the user interface more interactive and visually appealing.

To begin, make sure you have PyQt5 or PySide installed on your machine. You can install them using pip:

pip install PyQt5

or

pip install PySide2

Now, let’s get started with building our button with a custom icon. We will first import the necessary modules:

from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QMainWindow, QPushButton
from PyQt5.QtGui import QIcon
from PyQt5.QtCore import QSize
import sys

Next, create a class for our main window and define the init method to set up the window:

class MainWindow(QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()

        self.setWindowTitle("Button Animation Example")
        self.setGeometry(100, 100, 800, 600)

Now, let’s create a method to add a QPushButton with a custom icon to our window:

    def add_button(self):
        button = QPushButton(self)
        button.setIcon(QIcon("icon.png"))  # Replace "icon.png" with the path to your custom icon
        button.setIconSize(QSize(50, 50))  # Set the size of the icon
        button.setGeometry(100, 100, 50, 50)  # Set the position and size of the button

We can now call the add_button method in the init method to add the button to our window:

        self.add_button()

Next, let’s animate the button when it is clicked. We will use PyQt’s animation framework for this. Import the necessary module for animation:

from PyQt5.QtCore import QPropertyAnimation

Then, define a method to animate the button when it is clicked:

    def animate_button(self, button):
        animation = QPropertyAnimation(button, b"geometry")
        animation.setDuration(1000)  # Set the duration of the animation in milliseconds
        animation.setStartValue(button.geometry())
        animation.setEndValue(button.geometry().adjusted(50, 50, -50, -50))  # Adjust the position and size of the button
        animation.start()

Now, connect the animate_button method to the clicked event of the button:

        button.clicked.connect(lambda: self.animate_button(button))

Finally, create an instance of QApplication and MainWindow, and start the application:

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)
    window = MainWindow()
    window.show()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

And that’s it! You have now created a PyQt or PySide application with a button that has a custom icon and an animation that triggers when the button is clicked. You can further customize the button and animation to suit your needs and create a modern UI with interactive elements.