pyside6-modern-widgets

Cross-platform desktop widgets for PySide6. The package provides frameless window chrome, navigation, and tabs while retaining familiar Qt widget APIs.

• ModernWindow: a lightweight, frameless QWidget window with selected QMainWindow-compatible methods.
• NavigationSidebar: a collapsible navigation sidebar.
• NavigationView: a sidebar and synchronized page stack in one widget.
• TabView: a WinUI-inspired tab widget.

Supported environment

Supports Windows, macOS, and Linux with Python 3.10-3.12, PySide6 6.8.3, and the Fusion style. Window backgrounds, including the custom title bar, use the same Qt-painted watercolor themes and behavior on every platform.

Right-clicking the custom title bar opens the native Windows system menu. On platforms without an equivalent frameless-window API, a Qt menu provides the available restore, minimize, maximize, and close commands.

Installation

pip install pyside6-modern-widgets

PyInstaller

The installed package automatically registers its PyInstaller hook. Applications using these widgets can be frozen normally without package-specific --hidden-import or --add-data options:

pyinstaller your_app.py

Example

from PySide6.QtGui import QAction
from PySide6.QtWidgets import QApplication, QLabel

from pyside6_modern_widgets import ModernWindow

app = QApplication([])
window = ModernWindow()
window.setWindowTitle("Modern window")

file_menu = window.menuBar().addMenu("&File")
exit_action = QAction("Exit", window)
exit_action.triggered.connect(window.close)
file_menu.addAction(exit_action)

window.setCentralWidget(QLabel("Hello"))
window.resize(800, 500)
window.show()
app.exec()

Themes

Widgets follow the process-wide theme manager by default. A theme change also updates the application palette so regular Qt content remains readable:

from pyside6_modern_widgets import DARK_THEME, theme_manager

theme_manager().setTheme(DARK_THEME)

Use theme_manager().setFollowsSystemTheme(True) to select a built-in theme from application palette changes. Pass theme=LIGHT_THEME or theme=DARK_THEME to an individual widget for a local override. Layout metrics can be customized with ModernMetrics without modifying component internals. The Theme Style submenu in the upper-right window menu switches between the modern and classic watercolor palettes while preserving the current light or dark mode and application accent color.

TabView uses the standard Qt argument order: addTab(widget, text) or addTab(widget, icon, text). The former reverse (widget, text, icon) order is not supported.

Runnable window/navigation and multi-tab examples are available in the examples directory.

NavigationView automatically collapses into an overlay sidebar at widths up to 900px and returns to the side-by-side layout at 1040px. On return it restores the expand/collapse intent last selected with the sidebar toggle. Applications with a custom responsive policy can call setAutoSidebarOverlay(False) and control the mode with setSidebarOverlay().

ModernWindow intentionally remains based on QWidget, so it is suitable for both primary and auxiliary windows. Its compatibility surface is limited to the common menuBar(), addToolBar(), statusBar(), and setCentralWidget() methods; it does not implement QMainWindow docking or state-management features.

The bundled window and navigation icons are provided by Icons8 and remain subject to the Icons8 license.