flaskwebgui

You can support any Python web framework by providing a custom server function to FlaskUI. This function will receive server_kwargs which you can use to initialize and run your framework.

def start_custom_framework(**server_kwargs):
    app = server_kwargs.pop("app", None)
    # ... logic to start your framework ...
    app.run(**server_kwargs)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    FlaskUI(
        server=start_custom_framework,
        server_kwargs={
            "app": app,
            "port": 3000,
        },
    ).run()

To distribute your application as a standalone executable, use pyinstaller. If you have static assets (templates, CSS, etc.), you must include them using the --add-data flag.

# Basic command
pyinstaller -w -F main.py

# Including data files (Windows uses ';' separator, Linux/Mac uses ':')
pyinstaller --name your-app-name --add-data "templates:templates" --add-data "static:static" main.py

Install the package using pip to begin creating desktop applications with web frameworks.

pip install flaskwebgui

To use Django, you must first configure static/media files and add whitenoise.middleware.WhiteNoiseMiddleware to your MIDDLEWARE in settings.py. Then, create a gui.py file next to manage.py to launch the UI.

# gui.py
from flaskwebgui import FlaskUI
from djangodesktop.wsgi import application as app

if __name__ == "__main__":
    FlaskUI(app=app, server="django").run()

Run the application using:

python gui.py

Since the GUI is a browser window, you can use JavaScript to disable common developer tools like the F12 key and right-click context menus.

<script>
    // Prevent F12 key
    document.onkeydown = function (e) {
        if (e.key === "F12") {
            e.preventDefault();
        }
    };

    // Prevent right-click
    document.addEventListener("contextmenu", function (e) {
        e.preventDefault();
    });
</script>

To wrap a standard Flask application in a desktop window, import FlaskUI and call .run() with the app instance and server="flask".

from flask import Flask, render_template
from flaskwebgui import FlaskUI

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route("/")
def hello():
    return render_template('index.html')

if __name__ == "__main__":
    FlaskUI(app=app, server="flask").run()

For SocketIO applications, pass both the app and the socketio instance to FlaskUI, and set server="flask_socketio".

from flask import Flask, render_template
from flask_socketio import SocketIO
from flaskwebgui import FlaskUI

app = Flask(__name__)
app.config['SECRET_KEY'] = 'secret!'
socketio = SocketIO(app)

@app.route("/")
def hello():
    return render_template('index.html')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    FlaskUI(
        app=app,
        socketio=socketio,
        server="flask_socketio",
        width=800,
        height=600,
    ).run()

To use FastAPI, pass the app instance and set server="fastapi". The application will be served using uvicorn.

from fastapi import FastAPI, Request
from fastapi.responses import HTMLResponse
from fastapi.staticfiles import StaticFiles
from fastapi.templating import Jinja2Templates
from flaskwebgui import FlaskUI

app = FastAPI()
app.mount("/public", StaticFiles(directory="dist/"))
templates = Jinja2Templates(directory="dist")

@app.get("/", response_class=HTMLResponse)
async def root(request: Request):
    return templates.TemplateResponse("index.html", {"request": request})

if __name__ == "__main__":
    FlaskUI(app=app, server="fastapi").run()

You can programmatically close the desktop window by calling close_application() from within a web framework route.

from flaskwebgui import FlaskUI, close_application

@app.route("/close", methods=["GET"])
def close_window():
    close_application()

You can control the verbosity of flaskwebgui logs by setting the FLASKWEBGUI_LOG_LEVEL environment variable before running your application. Supported levels are standard Python logging levels (e.g., DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR).

Default level is DEBUG.

export FLASKWEBGUI_LOG_LEVEL=INFO
python your_app.py

You can override the automatic browser detection by providing specific paths or commands to FlaskUI:

• browser_path: An absolute path to the browser executable (e.g., /usr/bin/google-chrome).
• browser_command: A list of strings representing the full command to launch the browser. This overrides both browser_path and the default flags generated by get_browser_command.
• extra_flags: A list of strings to append to the default Chromium command-line switches (like --user-data-dir and --app).

# Using a specific browser path
ui = FlaskUI(app=app, server='flask', browser_path='/path/to/custom/browser')

# Adding custom flags
ui = FlaskUI(app=app, server='flask', extra_flags=['--incognito'])