25.2. tkinter.ttk — Tk themed widgets

Source code: Lib/tkinter/ttk.py

The tkinter.ttk module provides access to the Tk themed widget set, introduced in Tk 8.5. If Python has not been compiled against Tk 8.5, this module can still be accessed if Tile has been installed. The former method using Tk 8.5 provides additional benefits including anti-aliased font rendering under X11 and window transparency (requiring a composition window manager on X11).

The basic idea for tkinter.ttk is to separate, to the extent possible, the code implementing a widget’s behavior from the code implementing its appearance.

See also

Tk Widget Styling Support

A document introducing theming support for Tk

25.2.1. Using Ttk

To start using Ttk, import its module:

from tkinter import ttk

To override the basic Tk widgets, the import should follow the Tk import:

from tkinter import *
from tkinter.ttk import *

That code causes several tkinter.ttk widgets (Button, Checkbutton, Entry, Frame, Label, LabelFrame, Menubutton, PanedWindow, Radiobutton, Scale and Scrollbar) to automatically replace the Tk widgets.

This has the direct benefit of using the new widgets which gives a better look and feel across platforms; however, the replacement widgets are not completely compatible. The main difference is that widget options such as “fg”, “bg” and others related to widget styling are no longer present in Ttk widgets. Instead, use the ttk.Style class for improved styling effects.

See also

Converting existing applications to use Tile widgets

A monograph (using Tcl terminology) about differences typically encountered when moving applications to use the new widgets.

25.2.2. Ttk Widgets

Ttk comes with 17 widgets, eleven of which already existed in tkinter: Button, Checkbutton, Entry, Frame, Label, LabelFrame, Menubutton, PanedWindow, Radiobutton, Scale and Scrollbar. The other six are new: Combobox, Notebook, Progressbar, Separator, Sizegrip and Treeview. And all them are subclasses of Widget.

Using the Ttk widgets gives the application an improved look and feel. As discussed above, there are differences in how the styling is coded.

Tk code:

l1 = tkinter.Label(text="Test", fg="black", bg="white")
l2 = tkinter.Label(text="Test", fg="black", bg="white")

Ttk code:

style = ttk.Style()
style.configure