How to Temporarily Remove a Tkinter Widget without Using just .place

Tkinter is a popular Python library for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It provides a wide range of GUI elements like buttons, text fields, labels, etc. One of the many challenges that GUI developers face is temporarily removing a Tkinter widget from the GUI without using just ‘.place’. This article will provide some solutions to this problem.

The Problem with just .place

Let’s first understand why we cannot use just ‘.place’. The ‘.place’ method is used to position the widget in the GUI. A widget can be placed on the screen using coordinates with ‘.’ as the decimal point. The coordinate system used by Tkinter is relative to the top-left corner of the widget or container. However, if we use just ‘.place’ to temporarily remove a widget, we lose the reference to its position, and it becomes difficult to re-position it later.

Solution 1: Using .pack_forget()

The ‘.pack_forget()’ method can be used to remove a widget from the screen temporarily. It works by simply forgetting the widget’s position within the container. This method is useful when we want to hide a widget from view and later show it again. Here is an example code to illustrate this:

import tkinter as tk

root = tk.Tk()

# Create the label widget
lbl_hello = tk.Label(root, text='Hello World')

# Pack the widget on the screen
lbl_hello.pack()

# Hide the widget using 'pack_forget()'
lbl_hello.pack_forget()

# Show the widget again
lbl_hello.pack()

root.mainloop()

In this example, we first create the label widget ‘lbl_hello’ and pack it onto the screen using ‘.pack()’. The widget is then hidden using ‘.pack_forget()’. We later show the widget again by calling ‘.pack()’ once again.

Solution 2: Using .grid_forget()

The ‘.grid_forget()’ method can be used to remove a widget from the screen temporarily. It works similarly to ‘.pack_forget()’, except that it is used for widgets positioned using the grid geometry manager. Here is an example to illustrate the usage of ‘.grid_forget()’:

import tkinter as tk

root = tk.Tk()

# Create the label widget
lbl_hello = tk.Label(root, text='Hello World')

# Position the widget using grid
lbl_hello.grid(row=0, column=0)

# Hide the widget using 'grid_forget()'
lbl_hello.grid_forget()

# Show the widget again
lbl_hello.grid(row=0, column=0)

root.mainloop()

In this example, we first create the label widget ‘lbl_hello’ and position it on the screen using ‘.grid(row=0, column=0)’. The widget is then hidden using ‘.grid_forget()’. We later show the widget again by calling ‘.grid(row=0, column=0)’ once again.

Solution 3: Using .place_forget()

The ‘.place_forget()’ method can be used to remove a widget from the screen temporarily that is positioned using the ‘.place()’ method. Here is an example to illustrate the usage of ‘.place_forget()’:

import tkinter as tk

root = tk.Tk()

# Create the label widget
lbl_hello = tk.Label(root, text='Hello World')

# Position the widget using place
lbl_hello.place(x=50, y=50)

# Hide the widget using 'place_forget()'
lbl_hello.place_forget()

# Show the widget again
lbl_hello.place(x=50, y=50)

root.mainloop()

In this example, we first create the label widget ‘lbl_hello’ and position it on the screen using ‘.place(x=50, y=50)’. The widget is then hidden using ‘.place_forget()’. We later show the widget again by calling ‘.place(x=50,y=50)’ once again.

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed how to temporarily remove a Tkinter widget from the GUI. The solutions discussed above provide an easy way of hiding and showing widgets in Tkinter. It is essential to choose the right method depending on the geometry manager used in placing the widget. So try these solutions out and see what works best for your project!