Installing Tkinter in Visual Studio Code on Windows 10/11

Tkinter is a popular library for creating GUI applications in Python. In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Tkinter in Visual Studio Code on Windows 10 or 11.

Step 1: Install Python

Before we can install Tkinter, we need to have Python installed on our system. If you don’t have Python installed already, you can download it from the official Python website (https://www.python.org/downloads/) and follow the installation instructions.

Step 2: Install Visual Studio Code

If you don’t already have Visual Studio Code installed on your system, you can download it from the official website (https://code.visualstudio.com/) and follow the installation instructions.

Step 3: Install the Python extension for Visual Studio Code

To work with Python in Visual Studio Code, you will need to install the Python extension. Open Visual Studio Code and go to the Extensions view by clicking on the square icon on the sidebar or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+X. Search for "Python" in the Extensions view, and click on the Install button next to the Python extension.

Step 4: Create a Python virtual environment

It’s a good practice to create a virtual environment for each project to manage dependencies and avoid conflicts. Open a new terminal in Visual Studio Code by pressing Ctrl+` (backtick) or by clicking on Terminal > New Terminal. In the terminal, run the following command to create a virtual environment named "venv":

python -m venv venv

Activate the virtual environment by running the following command:

.venvScriptsactivate

Step 5: Install Tkinter

Tkinter is included with the standard Python distribution, so you don’t need to install it separately. However, depending on your Python installation, Tkinter may not be installed by default. To check if Tkinter is installed, you can run the following command in the terminal:

python -m tkinter

If Tkinter is installed, you should see a window pop up with the Tkinter version number. If Tkinter is not installed, you will need to install it using the following command:

pip install tk

Step 6: Create a new Python file

Now that Tkinter is installed, you can create a new Python file to test it out. Right-click on the Explorer sidebar in Visual Studio Code and select New File. Save the file with a .py extension, for example, "gui.py".

Step 7: Write your Tkinter code

Now you can start writing your Tkinter code in the Python file you created. Here’s a simple example to create a basic GUI window using Tkinter:

import tkinter as tk

root = tk.Tk()
root.title("Hello, Tkinter!")
root.geometry("300x200")

label = tk.Label(root, text="Hello, Tkinter!")
label.pack()

root.mainloop()

Save the file, then right-click in the editor and select Run Python File in Terminal to run your Tkinter application.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Tkinter in Visual Studio Code and created a simple GUI application using Tkinter. You can now explore more features of Tkinter and create more complex GUI applications using this powerful library.