Using Tkinter Listbox Widget

The Tkinter Listbox widget is used to display a collection of items from which the user can select one or more entries. It is useful in applications where users need to choose from a predefined list, such as selecting files, options, categories, or records.

A Listbox can be populated dynamically, configured to allow single or multiple selections, and connected to functions through event bindings. In this article, we will look at how to create a Listbox, add and remove items, retrieve selected values, configure selection modes, and react to user interaction.

Let us create a simple application with root window, where we create a listbox. I will use a simple .pack() to place the widget, and start an application with root.mainloop(). All other code with be place after the listbox line.

import tkinter as tk
root = tk.Tk()
listbox = tk.Listbox(root)
listbox.pack()
root.mainloop()

If we start the application, we will see only blank portion, which represents an empty listbox.

It is empty because we did not add eny entries. We can add entries in several ways. Entries in listbox have position- an integer starting from 0. So if we want to add two entries, for example, cities of Paris and Rome ,we can do this:

listbox.insert(0, "Paris")
listbox.insert(2,"Rome")