Creating Menu Bars with Tkinter – Python Tkinter GUI Tutorial #46

In this tutorial, we will be learning how to create a menu bar with Tkinter in Python. Menu bars are a common feature in graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that allow the user to access various options and functions within the application.

To begin, make sure you have Tkinter installed on your system. You can check if Tkinter is installed by running the following command in your Python interpreter:

import tkinter

If this command runs without any errors, then Tkinter is installed on your system. If not, you can install Tkinter using the following command:

pip install tk

Now that we have Tkinter installed, let’s start by creating a basic window with a menu bar. Copy and paste the following code into a new Python file:

import tkinter as tk

# Create the main window
root = tk.Tk()
root.title("Menu Bar Tutorial")

# Create a menu bar
menubar = tk.Menu(root)
root.config(menu=menubar)

# Create a File menu
file_menu = tk.Menu(menubar)
menubar.add_cascade(label="File", menu=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)

# Create an Edit menu
edit_menu = tk.Menu(menubar)
menubar.add_cascade(label="Edit", menu=edit_menu)
edit_menu.add_command(label="Cut")
edit_menu.add_command(label="Copy")
edit_menu.add_command(label="Paste")

# Create a Help menu
help_menu = tk.Menu(menubar)
menubar.add_cascade(label="Help", menu=help_menu)
help_menu.add_command(label="About")

# Start the main loop
root.mainloop()

In this code, we first import the tkinter module and create a new Tk object, which represents the main window of our application. We then set the title of the window and create a Menu object, which will be our menu bar.

Next, we create three menu items within the menu bar: File, Edit, and Help. Each of these menus contains several options that the user can select. We also add separators to visually separate different options within each menu.

Finally, we start the main event loop by calling the mainloop() method on the root object. This will display the window and allow the user to interact with the application.

You can run this code by saving it to a Python file and executing it using a Python interpreter. You should see a window with a menu bar at the top that contains the File, Edit, and Help menus, each with their respective options.

This is just a basic example of how to create a menu bar with Tkinter. You can further customize the appearance and functionality of the menus by adding additional options, commands, and event handlers.

I hope this tutorial was helpful in getting you started with creating menu bars in Tkinter. If you have any questions or run into any issues, feel free to ask for help. Happy coding!