PyQt GUI Template

This template comes with multiple desirable features for setting up a Python Qt-based GUI:

• GUI / app separation for GUI-less usage
• One-file executable build script to deliver your GUI
• File access abstraction to access arbitrary data file in both development use and "One-file executable" delivery
• Qt error message redirection to console (avoiding a common pitfall when using Qt with Python)
• A progress bar that keeps the GUI responsive while doing e.g. a long calculation (another common Qt Python issue)

Usage

Start the app with python run.py or as a module: python -m app.

Setup

• The base GUI only depends on PyQt6: pip install pyqt6
• To produce a standalone .exe file, also install pyinstaller (pip install pyinstaller) and run tools\make_exe.bat.
• To interactively edit the GUI, you can use Qt designer: designer.exe app\ui\app.ui. All changes made to ui files have to be converted with the provided tools\ui2py.bat script. To obtain the designer, there are multiple options:
  • Install Qt
  • If you are using conda (recommended anyways), a much easier way is to conda install qt
  • Use pyqt6-tools via pip install pyqt6-tools and run pyqt6-tools designer, although I found it to be less reliable than fully installing Qt, e.g. via conda (see above)