Disable focus for tkinter widgets – Python

Prerequisite: Python-Tkinter

In this article, we will discuss how to disable the focus from the widgets in the Tkinter framework. For disabling the focus, we use takefocus option inside the widget and assign its value to 0.

Stepwise implementation:

Step1: Import Tkinter and initialize tkinter window 

Python3

# import tkinter
import tkinter as tk

# initialize a tkinter window
root = tk.Tk()

# Creating the geometry with width and height of 300px
root.geometry("300x300")

# creating the body loop
root.mainloop()

Step 2: Add some widgets to the application

# Creating button widget

btn = tk.Button(root, text=”Button”) # initializing the widget.

btn.pack() # calling the widget in application

Code:

Python3

import tkinter as tk

# initialize a tkinter window
root = tk.Tk()

# Creating the geometry with width and height of 300px
root.geometry("300x300")

# create a button
btn = tk.Button(root, text ="I am button")
btn.pack()

# text widget
txt = tk.Entry(root, width=10)
txt.pack()

# create a radio button
rb = tk.Radiobutton(root, text ="I am radio button")
rb.pack()

# create a check button
cb = tk.Checkbutton(root, text = "I am check button")
cb.pack()


root.mainloop()

Output:

Here we notice that we are getting focus on each widget after pressing the TAB key. 

Step-3: Adding disable focus functionality to our program.

We use takefocus argument for disabling the focus

Syntax: takefocus = 0

# for button
btn = tk.Button(root, text="Button", takefocus=0)

The approach of the program is to disable the focus from the widgets with the help takefocus argument. We put its value to 0 for doing so. Other widgets have their focus enabled.

Code:

Python3

import tkinter as tk

root = tk.Tk()
root.geometry("300x300")

# creating button
btn = tk.Button(root, text ="I am button")
btn.pack()

# takefocus is set to 0 for disabling the TAB key
# focus in widget
btn_no_focus = tk.Button(root, text ="I am not focused",
                         takefocus = 0,foreground = "red")
btn_no_focus.pack()

# created an entry widget with width 10
txt = tk.Entry(root, width = 10)
txt.pack()

# creating a entry widget with width 10 and focus is
# 0 hence disabled
txt = tk.Entry(root, width = 10, takefocus = 0)
txt.pack()

# Creating radiobutton
rb = tk.Radiobutton(root, text ="I am radio button")
rb.pack()

# putting an takefocus=0 for disabling focus
rb_unfocus = tk.Radiobutton(root, text ="I am unfocused radio button",
                            takefocus = 0,foreground = "red")
rb_unfocus.pack()

# creating the checkbutton
cb = tk.Checkbutton(root, text = "I am check button")
cb.pack()


cb_unfocused = tk.Checkbutton(root, text = "I am unfocused check button",
                              takefocus = 0, foreground = "red")
cb_unfocused.pack()

root.mainloop()

Output:

Red-colored widgets have takefocus=0 and others don’t have this argument. The red color is only used for clarity you may also remove it.