Make Tkinter widget take focus

Question

I have a script that uses Tkinter to pop up a window with a message. How do I make sure it takes focus so the user doesn't miss it and explicitly has to dismiss the window. the code is :

root = Tk()
to_read = "Stuff" 
w = Label(root, text=to_read)
w.pack()
root.mainloop()

Answer 1

You can use focus_force method. See the following:

• Universal widget methods

But note the the documentation:

w.focus_force()

Force the input focus to the widget. This is impolite. It's better to wait for the window manager to give you the focus. See also .grab_set_global() below.

Update: It should work on root. For example, try running the following code. It will create a window and you can switch focus. After 5 seconds, it will try to grab the focus.

from Tkinter import *

root = Tk()
root.after(5000, lambda: root.focus_force())
root.mainloop()