QSystemTrayIcon example

by Martin Fitzpatrick Last updated PyQt5 FAQ
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probono | 2021-01-15 20:18:06 UTC | #1

Trying to extend the QSystemTrayIcon example by using a for loop to populate the menu only the last item in the list gets used in the menu. Why is this, and what would be the proper way to do this? In the real world, the contents of entries would be determined programatically rather than hardcoded.

python 
#!/usr/bin/env python3

from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QSystemTrayIcon, QMenu, QAction
from PyQt5.QtGui import QIcon


app = QApplication([])
app.setQuitOnLastWindowClosed(False)

icon = QIcon.fromTheme("application")
tray = QSystemTrayIcon()
tray.setIcon(icon)

tray.setVisible(True)

menu = QMenu()
entries = ["One", "Two", "Three"]
for entry in entries:
    action = QAction(entry)
    menu.addAction(action)
    action.triggered.connect(app.quit)

tray.setContextMenu(menu)

app.exec_()

Results in:

image|257x103

What happened to One and Two?

python 
% python3 --version
Python 3.7.9

% pkg search Qt | grep py37-qt5-5
py37-qt5-5.15.2

martin | 2021-01-21 21:31:32 UTC | #2

Hi @probono

Normally these sorts of issues are the result of things going out of scope. In Python, unless you retain a reference to an object in the current scope it will be garbage collected. In your code, the action object is being replaced on each iteration -- so on the second loop, the first action object no longer has a reference anywhere, and is deleted. This in turn deletes the Qt object, and removes it from the menu.

All you need to do is keep a reference to each action, for example in a list (here actions).

python 
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QSystemTrayIcon, QMenu, QAction
from PyQt5.QtGui import QIcon


app = QApplication([])
app.setQuitOnLastWindowClosed(False)

icon = QIcon.fromTheme("application")
tray = QSystemTrayIcon()
tray.setIcon(icon)

tray.setVisible(True)

menu = QMenu()
entries = ["One", "Two", "Three"]
actions = []
for entry in entries:
    action = QAction(entry)
    menu.addAction(action)
    action.triggered.connect(app.quit)
    actions.append(action)

tray.setContextMenu(menu)

app.exec_()

probono | 2021-01-21 21:32:24 UTC | #3

Sneaky! Thank you very much. With this trick it works.

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QSystemTrayIcon example was written by Martin Fitzpatrick .

Martin Fitzpatrick has been developing Python/Qt apps for 8 years. Building desktop applications to make data-analysis tools more user-friendly, Python was the obvious choice. Starting with Tk, later moving to wxWidgets and finally adopting PyQt.

QSystemTrayIcon example was published in faq on (updated ) . Feedback & Corrections can be submitted here.

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