How to Create a Tkinter GUI with Side Menu in Python Using PanedWindow and Frames

This tutorial walks through creating a Tkinter GUI with a side menu in Python, using PanedWindow and frames to organize the layout. It also introduces basic object‑oriented programming in Tkinter, showing how to wrap the scrollable content area in a custom Frame subclass for a reusable side menu layout. Let’s see how to implement this code.

Tkinter side menu code

from tkinter import Tk, Scrollbar, Canvas, Frame, Label, Button
from tkinter.ttk import Panedwindow


class Myframe(Frame):

    def __init__(self, frame, **kw):
        scrollbar = Scrollbar(frame)
        scrollbar.pack(side='right', fill='y', expand=False)
        self.canvas = Canvas(frame, yscrollcommand=scrollbar.set)
        self.canvas.pack(side='left', fill='both', expand=True)
        scrollbar.config(command=self.canvas.yview)

        Frame.__init__(self, frame, **kw)
        self.windows_item = self.canvas.create_window(0, 0, window=self, anchor='nw')
        self.canvas.config(**kw)

    root = Tk()
    root.title('MyTitle')
    root.resizable(width=False, height=False)
    pw = Panedwindow(root)
    pw.pack(side="left", fill="both", expand=True)
    pw.add(Label(text='Label1', anchor='w'))
    pw.add(Button(text='Button1', anchor='w'))
    pw.add(Label(text='Label2', anchor='w'))
    pw.add(Button(text='Button2', anchor='w'))
    pw.add(Button(text='Button3', anchor='w'))
    pw.add(Frame())

    header = Frame(root)
    header.pack()
    body = Frame(root)
    body.pack()
    footer = Frame(root)
    footer.pack()

    Label(header, text="Header:").pack()
    Label(footer, text="Footer:").pack(side='left', ipadx=20)
    Button(footer, text='Footer1').pack(side='left', ipadx=20)
    Button(footer, text='Footer2').pack(side='left', ipadx=20)

    fr = Frame(body, width=400, height=200)

    fr.update()
    root.mainloop()

The script creates a frame with a scrollbar on the right. After adding or removing widgets from a scrollable frame, the update() method is called to update the scrollable area.

To add some more widgets, just extend the frame method in the script.

You can also create a new method to add some more functions behind the buttons.