Using Python Progress Bar Libraries: Progress, tqdm, alive‑progress, and PySimpleGUI

If you have never used a progress bar, you might think it adds unnecessary complexity, but adding one only requires a few lines of code. Below we show how to add progress bars in command‑line scripts and in a PySimpleGUI UI.

Progress

The first library demonstrated is progress . You define the number of iterations, choose a bar type, and update the bar on each iteration.

<code>import time
from progress.bar import IncrementalBar
mylist = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
bar = IncrementalBar('Countdown', max=len(mylist))
for item in mylist:
    bar.next()
    time.sleep(1)
bar.finish()
</code>

The resulting bar looks like the animated GIF shown below.

Progress also supports several bar styles, which can be selected from its documentation.

tqdm

The tqdm library provides a similar interface with a few extra options.

<code>import time
from tqdm import tqdm
mylist = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
for i in tqdm(mylist):
    time.sleep(1)
</code>

The progress bar produced by tqdm is displayed in the following GIF.

More options are documented on the tqdm website.

alive‑progress

As the name suggests, alive_progress adds animated, lively effects to the bar.

<code>from alive_progress import alive_bar
import time
mylist = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
with alive_bar(len(mylist)) as bar:
    for i in mylist:
        bar()
        time.sleep(1)
</code>

The animated result is shown below.

More details and features can be found on its GitHub page.

PySimpleGUI

For a graphical progress bar, PySimpleGUI provides one_line_progress_meter for simple UI feedback.

<code>import PySimpleGUI as sg
import time
mylist = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
for i, item in enumerate(mylist):
    sg.one_line_progress_meter('This is my progress meter!', i+1, len(mylist), '-key-')
    time.sleep(1)
</code>

A more complex PySimpleGUI example creates a window with a ProgressBar element and updates it inside a loop.

<code>import PySimpleGUI as sg
import time
mylist = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
progressbar = [[sg.ProgressBar(len(mylist), orientation='h', size=(51,10), key='progressbar')]]
outputwin = [[sg.Output(size=(78,20))]]
layout = [[sg.Frame('Progress', layout=progressbar)], [sg.Frame('Output', layout=outputwin)], [sg.Submit('Start'), sg.Cancel()]]
window = sg.Window('Custom Progress Meter', layout)
progress_bar = window['progressbar']
while True:
    event, values = window.read(timeout=10)
    if event == 'Cancel' or event is None:
        break
    elif event == 'Start':
        for i, item in enumerate(mylist):
            print(item)
            time.sleep(1)
            progress_bar.UpdateBar(i+1)
window.close()
</code>

These examples demonstrate that adding a progress bar to a Python script is straightforward and greatly improves user feedback during long‑running operations.