psgdnd

Drag and Drop for PySimpleGUI

Description

Finally drag and drop! The long wait for drag-and-drop in the Tkinter port of PySimpleGUI might soon be over. psgdnd is a prototype release for using tkinterdnd2 to provide drag and drop functionality. In theory, this will work with all existing versions of PySimpleGUI.

psgdnd integrates tkinterdnd2 with PySimpleGUI and provides interfaces that are easy to use in a PySimpleGUI application.

This is super-early stage code and design, very much a work in progress. More experimenation and education needed, but in the meantime, give it a try and see if it'll meet your needs.

Installation using Pip

The psgdnd package is still at an early stage and not ready for distribution on PyPI. Instead you can pip install it from this repo by running:

python -m pip install --upgrade https://github.com/PySimpleGUI/psgdnd/zipball/main

Usage

To add drag and drop support to your window:

1. Import psgdnd2 into your code
2. Register which elements you want to accept drop events and the type drops to accept
3. Add processing of Drop Events to your event loop

A simple example

The sample program file_drop_example.py will accept filenames dropped onto the Input element. When dropped, the input element is updated to the filename or list of filenames.

import psgdnd as dnd
import PySimpleGUI as sg

"""
    Demo - Drag and Drop using tkinterdnd2

    Experimental drag and drop demo using tkinterdnd2 (you'll need to pip install it)
        python -m pip install tkinterdnd2
    Routes drop event through the window.read.

    Usage:
        * Register elements for drop events
            register_element_dnd(element, window, drop_type)

        * In event loop - drop events signaled via DropEvent object and value in values dict
            DropEvent object has fields:
                key
                element
                drop_type
                window
            values[event] = filename(s) or text that was dropped as a string            

    Copyright 2026 PySimpleGUI. All rights reserved.
"""


def main():
    layout = [[sg.Text('Filename to process')],
              [sg.Input(key="-INPUT-", expand_x=True), sg.FileBrowse('Browse')],
              [sg.Button("OK"), sg.Button("Cancel")]]

    # layout = [[sg.Column(layout, p=0, k='-COL-', expand_y=True, expand_x=True)]]  # if want to make the entire window the target

    window = sg.Window("File Drop Example", layout, finalize=True, auto_save_location=True, resizable=True)

    # register all elements to receive drop events
    for key, element in window.key_dict.items():
        dnd.register_element_dnd(element, window, dnd.DROP_TYPE_FILES)

    while True:
        event, values = window.read()
        # print(event, values)
        if event in (sg.WIN_CLOSED, "Cancel"):
            break
        if dnd.is_drop_event(event):                        # if it's a drag and drop event
            if event.key == '-INPUT-':                      # see what element was dropped on
                window['-INPUT-'].update(values[event])     # update the Input Element with text from event

    window.close()


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

License & Copyright

Copyright 2026 PySimpleGUI. All rights reserved.

Licensed under LGPL3.

Contributing

We are happy to receive issues describing bug reports and feature requests! If your bug report relates to a security vulnerability, please do not file a public issue, and please instead reach out to us at issues@PySimpleGUI.com.

We do not accept (and do not wish to receive) contributions of user-created or third-party code, including patches, pull requests, or code snippets incorporated into submitted issues. Please do not send us any such code! Bug reports and feature requests should not include any source code.

If you nonetheless submit any user-created or third-party code to us, (1) you assign to us all rights and title in or relating to the code; and (2) to the extent any such assignment is not fully effective, you hereby grant to us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, unlimited, sublicensable, transferrable license under all intellectual property rights embodied therein or relating thereto, to exploit the code in any manner we choose, including to incorporate the code into PySimpleGUI and to redistribute it under any terms at our discretion.