Tkinter – Create Menu

Tkinter Create Menu

To create a menu in Tkinter, use Tk.Menu class.

Let us consider that we need to build a window using Tkinter, with the following menu.

Menu1           # File is a menu in menu bar
  Item1         # item under file menu
  Item2         # item under file menu
  Item3         # item under file menu

When user clicks on the Menu1 menu, the items in the menu are displayed.

Steps to create Menu using Tkinter

Step 1

Import tkinter, and create a Tk object.

import tkinter as tk
window = tk.Tk()

Step 2

Create Menu bar using Tk.Menu class.

menu_bar = tk.Menu(window)

Step 3

Create a Menu in the Menu bar using Tk.Menu class.

menu_1 = tk.Menu(menu_bar, tearoff=0)

menu_bar is the master of menu_1.

Step 4

Add items to the menu. There are different kinds of items that can be added to a menu. Examples are command items, cascade items, checkbutton items, radio button items, etc.

In this example, we shall add command items to the menu.

menu_1.add_command(label="Item1")
menu_1.add_command(label="Item2")
menu_1.add_command(label="Item3")

We have added three command items to the menu_1. For all these three command items, menu_1 is the master.

Step 5

Add menu to the menu bar. That is, add File menu menu_1 to the main Menu menu_bar.

menu_bar.add_cascade(label="MyMenu", menu=menu_1)

We have labelled the menu as Menu1. The label Menu1 would be displayed for the menu in the Menu bar.

Step 6

Attach the menu bar to the main Tk window.

window.config(menu=menu_bar)

Step 7

Start the Tkinter event loop.

window.mainloop()

Example

The following is the complete program by combining all the above steps to create and display a menu in the window.

Python Program

import tkinter as tk

# Create the main window
window = tk.Tk()
window.title("PythonExamples.org")
window.geometry("300x200")

# Create the menu bar
menu_bar = tk.Menu(window)

# Create the Menu1 menu
menu_1 = tk.Menu(menu_bar, tearoff=0)
menu_1.add_command(label="Item1")
menu_1.add_command(label="Item2")
menu_1.add_command(label="Item3")

# Add Menu1 to the menu bar
menu_bar.add_cascade(label="Menu1", menu=menu_1)

# Attach the menu bar to the main window
window.config(menu=menu_bar)

# Start the Tkinter event loop
window.mainloop()

Output on MacOS

Run the program.

Hover on the Menu1.

Summary

In this Python Tkinter tutorial, we learned how to create a Menu using Tkinter, with the help of examples.