Introduction to Kivy ; A Cross-platform Python Framework

Difficulty Level : Easy
Last Updated : 13 Jan, 2021

Kivy is a graphical user interface open-source Python library that allows you to develop multi-platform applications on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux, and Raspberry Pi. The best thing about kivy is, it performs better than HTML5 cross-platform alternatives.

Note that it is necessary to have Python 3 on your machine to make use of the library.

Installation in Windows:

Step 1: Update the pip and wheel before installing kivy by entering this command in cmd-

python -m pip install --upgrade pip wheel setuptools

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Step 2: Install the dependencies-

python -m pip install docutils pygments pypiwin32 kivy.deps.sdl2 kivy.deps.glew
python -m pip install kivy.deps.gstreamer
python -m pip install kivy.deps.angle

Step 3: Install kivy.

python -m pip install kivy

It will result in something like the below image:

Installation in Linux:

Step 1: Add the PPA by entering this command in terminal-

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kivy-team/kivy

Step 2: Update your package list using your package manager-

sudo apt-get update

Step 3: Install Kivy

sudo apt-get install python3-kivy

Create an application

There are three steps of creating an application with kivy:

Inherit Kivy’s App class which represents the window for our widgets
Create a build() method, which will show the content of the widgets.
And at last calling of the run() method.

Example :
This is python3 code to make a simple application that shows the desired text on the system’s screen:

Python3

import kivy
kivy.require('1.10.0')
  
from kivy.app import App
from kivy.uix.button import Label
  
# Inherit Kivy's App class which represents the window
# for our widgets
# HelloKivy inherits all the fields and methods
# from Kivy
class HelloKivy(App):
  
    # This returns the content we want in the window
    def build(self):
  
        # Return a label widget with Hello Kivy
        return Label(text ="Hello Geeks")
  
helloKivy = HelloKivy()
helloKivy.run()