Are there default icons in PyQt/PySide?

Question

I'm reading a tutorial on PySide and I was thinking , do I need to find my own icons for every thing or is there some way to use some built in icons . That way I wouldn't need to find an entire new set of icons if I want my little gui to run on another desktop environment .

Answer 1

What you need is Pyside QIcon.fromTheme function. Basicaly it creates QIcon object with needed icon from current system theme.

Usage:

undoicon = QIcon.fromTheme("edit-undo")

"edit undo" - name of the icon "type"/"function" can be found here

This works on X11 systems, for MacOSX and Windows check QIcon documentation QIcon.fromTheme

Edit Inserting this from the website, since last time it was a broken link.

static PySide.QtGui.QIcon.fromTheme(name[, fallback=QIcon()])

Parameters:

• name – unicode
• fallback – PySide.QtGui.QIcon

Return type:

PySide.QtGui.QIcon

Returns the PySide.QtGui.QIcon corresponding to name in the current icon theme. If no such icon is found in the current theme fallback is returned instead.

The latest version of the freedesktop icon specification and naming specification can be obtained here:

• http://standards.freedesktop.org/icon-theme-spec/icon-theme-spec-latest.html
• http://standards.freedesktop.org/icon-naming-spec/icon-naming-spec-latest.html

To fetch an icon from the current icon theme:

undoicon = QIcon.fromTheme("edit-undo") 

Or if you want to provide a guaranteed fallback for platforms that do not support theme icons, you can use the second argument:

undoicon = QIcon.fromTheme("edit-undo", QIcon(":/undo.png")) 

Note

By default, only X11 will support themed icons. In order to use themed icons on Mac and Windows, you will have to bundle a compliant theme in one of your PySide.QtGui.QIcon.themeSearchPaths() and set the appropriate PySide.QtGui.QIcon.themeName() .

See also

• PySide.QtGui.QIcon.themeName()
• PySide.QtGui.QIcon.setThemeName()
• PySide.QtGui.QIcon.themeSearchPaths()

Answer 2

There is another way to access some of the standard builtin icons in PyQt/PySide using the standard pixmap in the default style. For example, the following creates an icon for opening a file:

self.style().standardIcon(QtGui.QStyle.SP_DialogOpenButton) 

For the full list of standard pixmaps, see:

http://srinikom.github.io/pyside-docs/PySide/QtGui/QStyle.html#PySide.QtGui.PySide.QtGui.QStyle.StandardPixmap