Customizing syntax highlighting

The coloring of the syntax highlighting can be customized by passing a formats dictionary to the PythonConsole constructer. This dictionary must be shaped as follows:

import pyqtconsole.highlighter as hl
console = PythonConsole(formats={
    'keyword':    hl.format('blue', 'bold'),
    'operator':   hl.format('red'),
    'brace':      hl.format('darkGray'),
    'defclass':   hl.format('black', 'bold'),
    'string':     hl.format('magenta'),
    'string2':    hl.format('darkMagenta'),
    'comment':    hl.format('darkGreen', 'italic'),
    'self':       hl.format('black', 'italic'),
    'numbers':    hl.format('brown'),
    'inprompt':   hl.format('darkBlue', 'bold'),
    'outprompt':  hl.format('darkRed', 'bold'),
    'fstring':    hl.format('darkCyan', 'bold'),
    'escape':     hl.format('darkorange', 'bold'),
})

All keys are optional and default to the value shown above if left unspecified.

Clear console

A local method, named clear(), is available to clear the input screen and reset the line numbering. Enable it by pushing the method into the available namespace in the console:

console.interpreter.locals["clear"] = console.clear

Shell commands

Optionally, commands entered in the console that start with a special character (e.g. ‘!’) will be executed as shell commands. The output of the command will be printed in the console. This feature is disabled by default, but can be enabled by setting the shell_cmd_prefix parameter when creating the console. For example, on a Linux or macOS system, setting shell_cmd_prefix=’!’ and entering !ls -l will list the files in the current directory.

console = PythonConsole(shell_cmd_prefix=True)

IN [0]: !ls -l
OUT[0]: total 16546
        -rw-r--r-- 1 user user      18741 Fen  6  2026  file1.txt
        -rw-r--r-- 1 user user      18741 Feb  6  2026  file2.txt

Prompt String

By default IN [n]: and OUT [n]: are displayed before each input and output line. You can customize this through constructor arguments:

# Including the line numbers:
console = PythonConsole(inprompt="%d >", outprompt="%d <")
# Or just static:
console = PythonConsole(inprompt=">>>", outprompt="<<<")

v1.3.0

Date: 17.02.2026

• migrated from setup.py + setup.cfg to pyproject.toml

• dropped official support for Python 3.8 and added 3.13 and 3.14 (no code changes)

• fixed issue with displaying syntax errors for Python 3.13

• fixed issue with multibyte characters (emojis) breaking the input (#87)

• added optional built-in method to clear all input (#58)

• added optional escape character to execute system commands (e.g !ls -l) (#93)

• added option to change the prompt placeholder strings (#68)

• fixed issues in string highlighting (#69)

v1.2.3

Date: 19.09.2023

• fixed indentation and autocomplete conflict (#74)

• replaced QRegExp for compatibility with QT6 (#76)

v1.2.2

Date: 18.10.2021

• fixed PyQt warning because of explicit integer type

• fixed jedi autocomplete because of method rename

v1.2.1

Date: 17.03.2020

• fix accepting input with AltGr modifier on win10 (#53)

v1.2.0

Date: 17.03.2020

• add PySide2 compatibility

• add Ctrl-U shortcut to clear the input buffer

• use standard QtPy package to provide the compatibility layer

• hide the cursor during the execution of a python command

• mimic shell behaviour when using up and down key to go to end of history

• fix crash when closing the interpreter window of the threaded example

• disable excepthook on displaying exception

• write ‘n’ before syntax errors for consistency

Thanks to @roberthdevries and @irgolic for their contributions!

v1.1.5

Date: 25.11.2019

• fix TypeError in highlighter when called without formats

v1.1.4

Date: 21.11.2019

• fix AttributeError due to QueuedConnection on PyQt<5.11 (#23)

• fix exception on import when started within spyder (#26)

• fix gevent example to incorporate interoperability code for gevent/Qt (#28)

• fix not waiting for empty line when entering code blocks before applying input (#30)

• fix TypeError during compilation step on python 3.8

• allow user to override syntax highlighting color preferences (#29) note that this is provisional API

• automate release process (#34)