SimpleKivy - A Modern Approach to Kivy GUI Development

A simplified and intuitive way to build Kivy GUI applications, while retaining the full power and flexibility of Kivy.

🚀 Check out the Ergo Create YouTube Channel for tutorials, examples, and live coding sessions!

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Why SimpleKivy?

Building Kivy apps traditionally requires managing multiple files (.py + .kv), understanding complex widget hierarchies, and writing verbose code. SimpleKivy changes that by offering:

✅ Single-file development – No more switching between Python and KV language.
✅ Rapid prototyping – Design UIs quickly with minimal boilerplate.
✅ Easy modifications – Update layouts and widgets easily.
✅ Beautiful by default – Leverage Kivy's graphics engine without the hassle.
✅ Focus on functionality – Spend less time on GUI code, more on backend logic.

Core Philosophy

• ⚡ Code Faster – Reduce setup time and get straight to building.
• 🎨 Customize Easily – Modify styles, layouts, and behavior without deep Kivy knowledge.
• 🧩 Seamless Integration – Access Kivy's animations, effects, and legacy features effortlessly.
• 🤖 Backend-First – Keep your app logic clean while the GUI adapts.

Getting started

Installation

SimpleKivy has only been tested on Windows and on Python 3.10>. Support this project if you are interested on Linux and MacOS implementations.

Kivy

You need to install the 2.3 version of Kivy. Installation instructions can be found here.

SimpleKivy

You can install the latest development version with:

pip install git+https://github.com/ErgoCreate/SimpleKivy.git

⚠️ This project is in the early stages of development and is expected to change in the future.

⚠️ Use it at your own risk.

Optional modules

The Image widget has new copy/paste/save functionalities introduced in SimpleKivy that require the following modules to work as expected:

pip install pyperclipimg requests pillow

Highlights

• Simple design philosophy. Forget about kv files. Write only python code and get a user interface that resembles your code! Define your layout, define an event manager, create your app and run!
• The new MyApp class comes with a plethora of new capabilities and functionalities.
• WebView widget based on pywebview (extremely experimmental but it finally works!).
• IconFont. Easily integrate any webfont to display icons in labels and buttons. By default, you can use the Material Desing Icons webfont to display a symbol like this as easily as setting mdi("creation") as the text in any widget that supports markup, similar to setting <span class="mdi mdi-creation"></span> in html.
• Native File-chooser/file-save implementation using tkinter.
• Boosted capabilities for widgets (background and line colors for the most used widgets).
• Widget maths! Easily create rows or columns of widgets using simple math operators.
  • Label*Button = # Horizontal box with a Label beside a Button
  • Label/Button = # Vertical box with a Label on top of a Button
• Integrated multithreadding and queue management. Useful for deploying heavy tasks without freezing your user interphase.
• Tooltip implementation for several widgets.
• Flexible color definition. The definition of colors is handled in more diverse ways. For example, you can set any color property to red in any of the following ways:
  • RGBA iterable: (1,0,0,1)
  • RGB iterable: (1,0,0)
  • Color name from the matplotlib list of named colors: "red" or "r"
  • Hexadecimal color value: "#ff0000"
• Define sizes more easily with strings:
  • size = "x30" is equivalent to width = 30, size_hint_x = None.
  • size = "y60" is equivalent to height = 60, size_hint_y = None.
  • size = "x30y60" is equivalent to size = (30,60), size_hint = (None,None).
  • size = "xchildren" dynamically sets the width to the sum of the children's width.
  • size = "ychildren" dynamically sets the height to the sum of the children's height.
  • size = "xchildrenychildren" dynamically sets the size to the sum of the children's width and height.

Usage

This Code

link

import SimpleKivy.SimpleKivy as sk

sk.auto_config() # Size, multitouch_emulation = False, etc.

# All the stuff inside your window.
lyt=[
    [sk.Label('Input your name:')],
    [sk.Input(k='i',size='y40')*sk.B('Say hi!',size='x100y40')],
    [sk.T(k='msg')]
]

# Your backend code must be inside a function with 2 arguments (app, event)
# and should be added as the event_manager argument of the MyApp class.
def evman(app,ev):
    
    # Detect the button released event
    if ev=='Say hi!':
        # Update the text of the "msg" widget
        app('msg',text=f"Hi {app['i'].text}!")

# Create the App
app=sk.MyApp(
    title="Say hi app",
    layout=lyt,
    event_manager=evman
)

# Run the App
app.run()

Makes This Window

Latest Changes

• Renamed some element classes for consistency.
• New widgets showcase: .
• More customization options for all widgets.
• Keep-on-top and alpha (transparency) options for the window.
• Expanded Label customization.
• Expanded InputText customization.
• ColorProperty.
• Default fonts can be entered as keywords (see SimpleKivy.Fonts): Text('Hello World', font_name='roboto it').
• Integrate custom widgets with the skwidget decorator and the skivify function.

Next In The List

• Examples and documentation.
• Fixing bugs and improvements to the existing widgets.
• Cleaning up the source code.

Suport Us

The best way to encourage future development and maintenance of this project is by donating. SimpleKivy will always remain completely free, and no features will ever be locked behind a paywall. There are no special benefits to donating. This page exists for people who wish to support our effort.

Make a donation (PayPal)

Subscribe to Patreon

Either way, SimpleKivy is free to use!

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Supported Elements

This is a list of the supported widgets that you can use in your window layouts right now:

ActionBar, ActionButton, ActionCheck, ActionInput, ActionLabelCheck, ActionPrevious, ActionSeparator, ActionToggleButton, Albumlist, Artistlist, Button, BarTouch, BarTouchV, Boxit, BoxitAngle, BoxitH, BoxitV, Boxit_scatter, ButtonBoxit, ButtonBoxitAngle, CalcSheet, DatePicker, Camera, CheckBox, CodeInput, ComboBox, DropDown, External, Filelist, FlatButton, FlatButtonAngle, FlatRoundButton, FlatToggleButton, FlatToggleButtonAngle, Floatit, Grid, HoverBoxit, Image, TextInput, TextInputDark, JoinLabel, Label, LabelCheck, LargeText, ListBox, Menu, ModalView, Multiline, MultilineDark, PagedText, Pageit, Playlist, Popup, ProgressBar, ProgressBar2, ProgressBarTouch, Relativeit, RoundButtonRelativeit, RoundRelativeit, Rowlist, RstDocument, Scatter, Screen, ScreenManager, ScrollView, ScrollbarMirror, Slider, SliderTouch, Spinner, Splitter, Stackit, StripLayout, Switch, ToggleButton, Tab, Tab2, Titlebar, ToActionItem, ToggleButtonBoxit, TreeView, Video, VideoPlayer, WebView