Changing ttk widget text color

Question

I\'ve searched all over, but have yet to find a simple example showing how to change a minor element of a ttk widget style and applying it dynamically (after widget creation

Answer 1

You will need to create a custom style, and then apply that style to the widget. To create a custom style, first get an instance of ttk.Style, and then use the configure method to derive a new style from an existing one. The following example creates a new style named "Red.TCheckbutton":

style = ttk.Style()
style.configure("Red.TCheckbutton", foreground="red")

Next, you simply associate this style with the widget when you want the color to change:

my_checkbutton.configure(style="Red.TCheckbutton")

The best resource for learning how to work with the ttk styles is tkdocs.com. Specifically, http://www.tkdocs.com/tutorial/styles.html.

Here's a complete working example:

import ttk
import Tkinter as tk

class ExampleApp(tk.Frame):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        tk.Frame.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)
        self.var1 = tk.StringVar()
        self.var2 = tk.StringVar()

        f1 = ttk.Frame(self)
        red_button = ttk.Button(f1, text="Red", command=self.make_red)
        default_button = ttk.Button(f1, text="Default", command=self.make_default)
        default_button.pack(side="left")
        red_button.pack(side="left")

        f2 = ttk.Frame(self)
        self.cb_one = ttk.Checkbutton(f2, text="Option 1", variable=self.var1,
                                      onvalue=1, offvalue=0)
        self.cb_two  = ttk.Checkbutton(f2, text="Option 2", variable=self.var2,
                                       onvalue=1, offvalue=0)
        self.cb_one.pack(side="left")
        self.cb_two.pack(side="left")

        f1.pack(side="top", fill="x")
        f2.pack(side="top", fill="x")

        style = ttk.Style()
        style.configure("Red.TCheckbutton", foreground="red")

    def make_red(self):
        self.cb_one.configure(style="Red.TCheckbutton")
        self.cb_two.configure(style="Red.TCheckbutton")

    def make_default(self):
        self.cb_one.configure(style="TCheckbutton")
        self.cb_two.configure(style="TCheckbutton")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    root = tk.Tk()
    ExampleApp(root).pack(fill="both", expand=True)
    root.mainloop()