Display fullscreen mode on Tkinter

Question

How can I make a frame in Tkinter display in fullscreen mode? I saw this code, and it's very useful…:

>>> import Tkinter
>>> root = Tkinter.Tk()
>>> root.overrideredirect(True)
>>> root.geometry("{0}x{1}+0+0".format(root.winfo_screenwidth(), root.winfo_screenheight()))

…but is it possible to edit the code so that hitting Esc automatically makes the window "Restore down"?

Answer 1

I think this is what you're looking for:

Tk.attributes("-fullscreen", True)  # substitute `Tk` for whatever your `Tk()` object is called

You can use wm_attributes instead of attributes, too.

Then just bind the escape key and add this to the handler:

Tk.attributes("-fullscreen", False)

An answer to another question alluded to this (with wm_attributes). So, that's how I found out. But, no one just directly went out and said it was the answer for some reason. So, I figured it was worth posting.

Here's a working example (tested on Xubuntu 14.04) that uses F11 to toggle fullscreen on and off and where escape will turn it off only:

import sys
if sys.version_info[0] == 2:  # Just checking your Python version to import Tkinter properly.
    from Tkinter import *
else:
    from tkinter import *


class Fullscreen_Window:

    def __init__(self):
        self.tk = Tk()
        self.tk.attributes('-zoomed', True)  # This just maximizes it so we can see the window. It's nothing to do with fullscreen.
        self.frame = Frame(self.tk)
        self.frame.pack()
        self.state = False
        self.tk.bind("<F11>", self.toggle_fullscreen)
        self.tk.bind("<Escape>", self.end_fullscreen)

    def toggle_fullscreen(self, event=None):
        self.state = not self.state  # Just toggling the boolean
        self.tk.attributes("-fullscreen", self.state)
        return "break"

    def end_fullscreen(self, event=None):
        self.state = False
        self.tk.attributes("-fullscreen", False)
        return "break"

if __name__ == '__main__':
    w = Fullscreen_Window()
    w.tk.mainloop()

If you want to hide a menu, too, there are only two ways I've found to do that. One is to destroy it. The other is to make a blank menu to switch between.

self.tk.config(menu=self.blank_menu)  # self.blank_menu is a Menu object

Then switch it back to your menu when you want it to show up again.

self.tk.config(menu=self.menu)  # self.menu is your menu.