How can I create a simple message box in Python?

Question

I'm looking for the same effect as alert() in JavaScript.

I wrote a simple web-based interpreter this afternoon using Twisted.web. You basically submit a block of Python code through a form, and the client comes and grabs it and executes it. I want to be able to make a simple popup message, without having to re-write a whole bunch of boilerplate wxPython or TkInter code every time (since the code gets submitted through a form and then disappears).

I've tried tkMessageBox:

import tkMessageBox
tkMessageBox.showinfo(title="Greetings", message="Hello World!")

but this opens another window in the background with a tk icon. I don't want this. I was looking for some simple wxPython code but it always required setting up a class and entering an app loop etc. Is there no simple, catch-free way of making a message box in Python?

score 293 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 17 '20 at 10:04

293

You could use an import and single line code like this:

import ctypes  # An included library with Python install.   
ctypes.windll.user32.MessageBoxW(0, "Your text", "Your title", 1)

Or define a function (Mbox) like so:

import ctypes  # An included library with Python install.
def Mbox(title, text, style):
    return ctypes.windll.user32.MessageBoxW(0, text, title, style)
Mbox('Your title', 'Your text', 1)

Note the styles are as follows:

##  Styles:
##  0 : OK
##  1 : OK | Cancel
##  2 : Abort | Retry | Ignore
##  3 : Yes | No | Cancel
##  4 : Yes | No
##  5 : Retry | Cancel 
##  6 : Cancel | Try Again | Continue

Have fun!

Note: edited to use MessageBoxW instead of MessageBoxA

edited Oct 17 '20 at 10:04

agcala

1,273
14
25

answered Mar 07 '13 at 15:43

user2140260

2,990
2
11
4

2

Exactly what I was looking for. The OP too from what it sounds like. Should be marked as the answer! – CodeMonkey Oct 10 '13 at 18:13
3

Meh. Perhaps I spoke too soon. I'm only getting a single character for both title and message. Weird... – CodeMonkey Oct 10 '13 at 18:21
20

Had to use MessageBoxW instead of MessageBoxA. – CodeMonkey Oct 10 '13 at 19:13
1

any similar way to implement input (a dialog with a simple text box)? – Amir Ali Akbari Dec 02 '13 at 17:00
11

@CodeMonkey in python 3, use MessageBoxW instead of MessageBoxA – Oliver Ni Jan 13 '14 at 05:01
1

For compatibility between Python 2 and Python 3 use: `ctypes.windll.user32.MessageBoxA(0, b"Your text", b"Your title", 1)` – Alexander O'Mara Feb 01 '15 at 18:54
Doesnt seem to work on Python 2.7 : ```AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'windll'``` – magicrebirth May 22 '15 at 09:43
Does not work on Python 2.7 or 3.4; i'm getting the same error as magicrebirth. – Ryan Goldstein Aug 13 '15 at 11:11
Update: It only fails with Cygwin, Windows python works fine. – Ryan Goldstein Aug 13 '15 at 11:19
@user2140260 Please let me know there is something like this in linux. – Sandy Sep 23 '15 at 13:39
what's the "0" stand for? – JinSnow Dec 26 '16 at 15:21
1

If you want to raise the messagebox above other windows, set its last parameter to 0x00001000 – Lenny Jan 26 '17 at 18:07
2

**Note:** My popup was not in English, and can be corrected by reading user [Burhan Khalid's answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/20783443/2053706) – Ari Sep 14 '17 at 06:29
1

Python 3.6 - I had to change this line: `return ctypes.windll.user32.MessageBoxW(0, text, title, style)` to look like this: **`return windll.user32.MessageBoxW(0, text, title, style)`** (that is, remove "ctypes". Also, I changed `import ctypes` to **`from ctypes import *`** – cssyphus May 25 '18 at 03:55
Just adding a [link to the MS site](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/win32/api/winuser/nf-winuser-messageboxw) which **defines the parameters of the `MessageBoxW` function**. – S3DEV Oct 31 '19 at 16:54
I got this error `AttributeError: module 'ctypes' has no attribute 'windll' ` – Oct 02 '20 at 18:39

score 56 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 03 '10 at 05:54

56

Have you looked at easygui?

import easygui

easygui.msgbox("This is a message!", title="simple gui")

answered Jun 03 '10 at 05:54

Ryan Ginstrom

13,275
5
39
59

9

this is not tkinter, it's not shipped by default, strange, who is interested with introducing such simple functionality to bring unnecessary dependencies? – Tebe Nov 22 '12 at 16:50
8

Actually gekannt, easygui is a wrapper around tkinter. Yes, it's an extra dependency, but it's a single python file. Some developers may think the dependency is worth it for implementing a dead-simple GUI. – Ryan Ginstrom May 23 '13 at 17:51

score 22 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 16 '11 at 11:03

22

Also you can position the other window before withdrawing it so that you position your message

#!/usr/bin/env python

from Tkinter import *
import tkMessageBox

window = Tk()
window.wm_withdraw()

#message at x:200,y:200
window.geometry("1x1+200+200")#remember its .geometry("WidthxHeight(+or-)X(+or-)Y")
tkMessageBox.showerror(title="error",message="Error Message",parent=window)

#centre screen message
window.geometry("1x1+"+str(window.winfo_screenwidth()/2)+"+"+str(window.winfo_screenheight()/2))
tkMessageBox.showinfo(title="Greetings", message="Hello World!")

answered Jul 16 '11 at 11:03

Lewis Cowles

221
2
2

3

Is there any method, so that we don't need to pross the _ok_ button in the _tkMessageBox_ and it process automatically? – varsha_holla Apr 23 '14 at 06:43
@varsha_holla That's not how message box's work. You might want to look into creating a standard window with a timer. – Kelly Elton Dec 11 '19 at 00:25

score 19 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 25 '10 at 22:44

19

The code you presented is fine! You just need to explicitly create the "other window in the background" and hide it, with this code:

import Tkinter
window = Tkinter.Tk()
window.wm_withdraw()

Right before your messagebox.

answered Aug 25 '10 at 22:44

Jotaf

431
4
5

4

I had to add "window.destroy()" to the end of this to get it to exit cleanly. – kuzzooroo Jan 25 '14 at 04:51

score 13 · Answer 5 · edited Feb 03 '21 at 15:35

13

The PyMsgBox module does exactly this. It has message box functions that follow the naming conventions of JavaScript: alert(), confirm(), prompt() and password() (which is prompt() but uses * when you type). These function calls block until the user clicks an OK/Cancel button. It's a cross-platform, pure Python module with no dependencies outside of tkinter.

Install with: pip install PyMsgBox

Sample usage:

import pymsgbox
pymsgbox.alert('This is an alert!', 'Title')
response = pymsgbox.prompt('What is your name?')

Full documentation at http://pymsgbox.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

edited Feb 03 '21 at 15:35

Roelant

3,185
1
18
49

answered Sep 04 '14 at 00:09

Al Sweigart

8,253
7
48
75

strange. you write that it has no dependencies, but when I try to use it it prints `AssertionError: Tkinter is required for pymsgbox` – shitpoet Jan 09 '19 at 20:06
I should change that: pymsgbox has no dependencies outside of the standard library, which tkinter is part of. What version of Python and what OS are you on? – Al Sweigart Jan 09 '19 at 22:00
Sorry, I am noob in Python, I thought that all python libs are installed through `pip`, but in fact part of libs are installed the other way - using system package manager. So I installed `python-tk` using my package manager. I'm using Python 2.7 on Debian. – shitpoet Jan 10 '19 at 13:20
offtopic: but the message box created by PyMsgBox/Tk looks pretty ugly on my Debian – shitpoet Jan 10 '19 at 13:22

score 10 · Answer 6 · edited May 04 '15 at 00:41

In Windows, you can use ctypes with user32 library:

from ctypes import c_int, WINFUNCTYPE, windll
from ctypes.wintypes import HWND, LPCSTR, UINT
prototype = WINFUNCTYPE(c_int, HWND, LPCSTR, LPCSTR, UINT)
paramflags = (1, "hwnd", 0), (1, "text", "Hi"), (1, "caption", None), (1, "flags", 0)
MessageBox = prototype(("MessageBoxA", windll.user32), paramflags)

MessageBox()
MessageBox(text="Spam, spam, spam")
MessageBox(flags=2, text="foo bar")

score 10 · Answer 7 · answered Jun 03 '10 at 11:52

On Mac, the python standard library has a module called EasyDialogs. There is also a (ctypes based) windows version at http://www.averdevelopment.com/python/EasyDialogs.html

If it matters to you: it uses native dialogs and doesn't depend on Tkinter like the already mentioned easygui, but it might not have as much features.

score 7 · Answer 8 · edited Nov 04 '18 at 22:55

import ctypes
ctypes.windll.user32.MessageBoxW(0, "Your text", "Your title", 1)

The last number (here 1) can be change to change window style (not only buttons!):

## Button styles:
# 0 : OK
# 1 : OK | Cancel
# 2 : Abort | Retry | Ignore
# 3 : Yes | No | Cancel
# 4 : Yes | No
# 5 : Retry | No 
# 6 : Cancel | Try Again | Continue

## To also change icon, add these values to previous number
# 16 Stop-sign icon
# 32 Question-mark icon
# 48 Exclamation-point icon
# 64 Information-sign icon consisting of an 'i' in a circle

For example,

ctypes.windll.user32.MessageBoxW(0, "That's an error", "Warning!", 16)

will give this:

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Dec 22 '13 at 09:16

1

Use

from tkinter.messagebox import *
Message([master], title="[title]", message="[message]")

The master window has to be created before. This is for Python 3. This is not fot wxPython, but for tkinter.

answered Dec 22 '13 at 09:16

HD1920

11
1

See my comment about "import *" on Robert's answer. – Jürgen A. Erhard Mar 07 '16 at 00:11

score 1 · Answer 10 · edited Mar 11 '14 at 13:19

1

import sys
from tkinter import *
def mhello():
    pass
    return

mGui = Tk()
ment = StringVar()

mGui.geometry('450x450+500+300')
mGui.title('My youtube Tkinter')

mlabel = Label(mGui,text ='my label').pack()

mbutton = Button(mGui,text ='ok',command = mhello,fg = 'red',bg='blue').pack()

mEntry = entry().pack

edited Mar 11 '14 at 13:19

Sanoob

2,328
3
26
34

answered Mar 11 '14 at 12:58

Robert

11
1

Also, please, for the love of all the is PEP8 and pythonic, wean yourself off "import *". It's bad, m'kay? – Jürgen A. Erhard Mar 07 '16 at 00:10

score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Sep 28 '19 at 17:37

Also you can position the other window before withdrawing it so that you position your message

from tkinter import *
import tkinter.messagebox

window = Tk()
window.wm_withdraw()

# message at x:200,y:200
window.geometry("1x1+200+200")  # remember its.geometry("WidthxHeight(+or-)X(+or-)Y")
tkinter.messagebox.showerror(title="error", message="Error Message", parent=window)

# center screen message
window.geometry(f"1x1+{round(window.winfo_screenwidth() / 2)}+{round(window.winfo_screenheight() / 2)}")
tkinter.messagebox.showinfo(title="Greetings", message="Hello World!")

Please Note: This is Lewis Cowles' answer just Python 3ified, since tkinter has changed since python 2. If you want your code to be backwords compadible do something like this:

try:
    import tkinter
    import tkinter.messagebox
except ModuleNotFoundError:
    import Tkinter as tkinter
    import tkMessageBox as tkinter.messagebox

score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Dec 29 '19 at 05:59

1

You can use pyautogui or pymsgbox:

import pyautogui
pyautogui.alert("This is a message box",title="Hello World")

Using pymsgbox is the same as using pyautogui:

import pymsgbox
pymsgbox.alert("This is a message box",title="Hello World")

answered Dec 29 '19 at 05:59

Some Guy

308
1
6

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Jul 15 '15 at 20:12

Not the best, here is my basic Message box using only tkinter.

#Python 3.4
from    tkinter import  messagebox  as  msg;
import  tkinter as      tk;

def MsgBox(title, text, style):
    box = [
        msg.showinfo,       msg.showwarning,    msg.showerror,
        msg.askquestion,    msg.askyesno,       msg.askokcancel,        msg.askretrycancel,
];

tk.Tk().withdraw(); #Hide Main Window.

if style in range(7):
    return box[style](title, text);

if __name__ == '__main__':

Return = MsgBox(#Use Like This.
    'Basic Error Exemple',

    ''.join( [
        'The Basic Error Exemple a problem with test',                      '\n',
        'and is unable to continue. The application must close.',           '\n\n',
        'Error code Test',                                                  '\n',
        'Would you like visit http://wwww.basic-error-exemple.com/ for',    '\n',
        'help?',
    ] ),

    2,
);

print( Return );

"""
Style   |   Type        |   Button      |   Return
------------------------------------------------------
0           Info            Ok              'ok'
1           Warning         Ok              'ok'
2           Error           Ok              'ok'
3           Question        Yes/No          'yes'/'no'
4           YesNo           Yes/No          True/False
5           OkCancel        Ok/Cancel       True/False
6           RetryCancal     Retry/Cancel    True/False
"""

You import formatting is completely bonkers. Are you an old COBOL or FORTRAN programmer, by any chance? ;-) — Jürgen A. Erhard, Mar 07 '16 at 00:11

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Jul 28 '15 at 16:21

0

check out my python module: pip install quickgui (Requires wxPython, but requires no knowledge of wxPython) https://pypi.python.org/pypi/quickgui

Can create any numbers of inputs,(ratio, checkbox, inputbox), auto arrange them on a single gui.

answered Jul 28 '15 at 16:21

Jerry T

1,159
14
15

score 0 · Answer 15 · answered Jun 08 '19 at 20:24

A recent message box version is the prompt_box module. It has two packages: alert and message. Message gives you greater control over the box, but takes longer to type up.

Example Alert code:

import prompt_box

prompt_box.alert('Hello') #This will output a dialog box with title Neutrino and the 
#text you inputted. The buttons will be Yes, No and Cancel

Example Message code:

import prompt_box

prompt_box.message('Hello', 'Neutrino', 'You pressed yes', 'You pressed no', 'You 
pressed cancel') #The first two are text and title, and the other three are what is 
#printed when you press a certain button

score 0 · Answer 16 · answered Dec 02 '19 at 19:21

ctype module with threading

i was using the tkinter messagebox but it would crash my code. i didn't want to find out why so i used the ctypes module instead.

for example:

import ctypes
ctypes.windll.user32.MessageBoxW(0, "Your text", "Your title", 1)

i got that code from Arkelis

i liked that it didn't crash the code so i worked on it and added a threading so the code after would run.

example for my code

import ctypes
import threading


def MessageboxThread(buttonstyle, title, text, icon):
    threading.Thread(
        target=lambda: ctypes.windll.user32.MessageBoxW(buttonstyle, text, title, icon)
    ).start()

messagebox(0, "Your title", "Your text", 1)

for button styles and icon numbers:

## Button styles:
# 0 : OK
# 1 : OK | Cancel
# 2 : Abort | Retry | Ignore
# 3 : Yes | No | Cancel
# 4 : Yes | No
# 5 : Retry | No
# 6 : Cancel | Try Again | Continue

## To also change icon, add these values to previous number
# 16 Stop-sign icon
# 32 Question-mark icon
# 48 Exclamation-point icon
# 64 Information-sign icon consisting of an 'i' in a circle

score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Aug 16 '20 at 15:42

I had to add a message box to my existing program. Most of the answers are overly complicated in this instance. For Linux on Ubuntu 16.04 (Python 2.7.12) with future proofing for Ubuntu 20.04 here is my code:

Program top

from __future__ import print_function       # Must be first import

try:
    import tkinter as tk
    import tkinter.ttk as ttk
    import tkinter.font as font
    import tkinter.filedialog as filedialog
    import tkinter.messagebox as messagebox
    PYTHON_VER="3"
except ImportError: # Python 2
    import Tkinter as tk
    import ttk
    import tkFont as font
    import tkFileDialog as filedialog
    import tkMessageBox as messagebox
    PYTHON_VER="2"

Regardless of which Python version is being run, the code will always be messagebox. for future proofing or backwards compatibility. I only needed to insert two lines into my existing code above.

Message box using parent window geometry

''' At least one song must be selected '''
if self.play_song_count == 0:
    messagebox.showinfo(title="No Songs Selected", \
        message="You must select at least one song!", \
        parent=self.toplevel)
    return

I already had the code to return if song count was zero. So I only had to insert three lines in between existing code.

You can spare yourself complicated geometry code by using parent window reference instead:

parent=self.toplevel

Another advantage is if the parent window was moved after program startup your message box will still appear in the predictable place.

How can I create a simple message box in Python?

17 Answers17

ctype module with threading

Program top

Message box using parent window geometry

Linked