The Label Widget in Tkinter

Things on this page are fragmentary and immature notes/thoughts of the author. Please read with your own judgement!

General Tips¶

1. ttk.Label is preferred over tk.Label.

Change the Text of a Label¶

After creating a Label (whose text has already been set), there are 3 different approaches that you can change its text.

Dict-like Access¶

:::python
label["text"] = "new text for the label"

Via the .config Method¶

This is the recommended way to update the text of a label in Tkinter.

:::python
label.config(text="new text for the label")

Via a StringVar¶

This way is more complicated and it requires that the a text variable is specified when the label is created.

:::python
import tkinter as tk
var_text = tk.StringVar()
label = Label(root, textvariable=var_text)
label.pac()
var_text = "new text for the label"

Notice that if you have set textvariable when creating a label, you cannot use the first 2 approaches to update its text. Instead, you must update the StringVar to update the text of the label.

Change the Image of a Label¶

After creating a Label (whose image has already been set), there are 2 ways you can change its image.

Dict-like Access¶

:::python
label["image"] = some_photo_image_obj

Via the .config Method¶

:::python
label.config(image=some_photo_image_obj)

Unlike the text of a Label object, there is no imagevariable option for a Label.

Size¶

If you don’t specify a size, the label is made just large enough to hold its contents. You can also use the height and width options to explicitly set the size. If you display text in the label, these options define the size of the label in text units. If you display bitmaps or images instead, they define the size in pixels (or other screen units). See the Button description for an example how to specify the size in pixels also for text labels.