Creating a Desktop Pet with Python and PyQt5: Full Source Code and Packaging Guide

The tutorial starts by describing the visual assets needed for a desktop pet, emphasizing the use of multiple white‑background GIFs that will be stitched together to animate the pet’s actions.

It then outlines three ways to obtain GIFs: (1) converting video to GIF with Premiere (PR), (2) using Photoshop’s timeline to create GIFs, and (3) searching online via Baidu for ready‑made GIF resources.

Next, the article presents the project directory structure, showing that main.py is the entry point and that subfolders such as normal/ and click/ store the animation files, while dialog.txt holds the pet’s dialogue lines.

<code>import os import sys import random from PyQt5.QtGui import * from PyQt5.QtCore import * from PyQt5.QtWidgets import *</code>

The core of the application is the DesktopPet class, a subclass of QWidget . Its __init__ method calls several helper functions:

init() – configures a frameless, always‑on‑top window with a transparent background.

initPall() – creates a system‑tray icon, adds a context menu with "Show" and "Exit" actions, and displays the tray icon.

initPetImage() – loads the static GIFs, sets up a QLabel for the animation, reads the dialogue file, and randomly positions the pet on the screen.

petNormalAction() – starts two QTimer objects that periodically trigger random animation changes and dialogue updates.

Key methods for interactivity include:

randomAct() – selects a random GIF from the normal animation list or, when the pet is clicked, plays a special click animation.

talk() – picks a random line from dialog.txt and displays it with styled text.

mousePressEvent , mouseMoveEvent , and mouseReleaseEvent – enable dragging the pet around the screen and change its state on click.

enterEvent – changes the cursor to a closed‑hand shape when the mouse hovers over the pet.

contextMenuEvent – provides a right‑click menu to hide or exit the application.

The script finishes with the usual PyQt5 entry point:

<code>if __name__ == '__main__':
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)
    pet = DesktopPet()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())</code>

After the development part, the guide explains how to package the program into a standalone executable using PyInstaller:

<code>pip install pyinstaller
pyinstaller -F -w main.py</code>

It shows screenshots of the packaging process, the resulting dist folder, and notes that the generated main.exe must be placed in the project’s root directory to run correctly.

Finally, the article provides a Baidu Cloud link to download the full project, a summary of the author’s experience, and a promotional QR code for a free Python course.