pygame.display

This module offers control over the pygame display. Pygame has a single display Surface that is either contained in a window or runs full screen. Once you create the display you treat it as a regular Surface. Changes are not immediately visible onscreen; you must choose one of the two flipping functions to update the actual display.

The origin of the display, where x = 0 and y = 0, is the top left of the screen. Both axes increase positively towards the bottom right of the screen.

The pygame display can actually be initialized in one of several modes. By default, the display is a basic software driven framebuffer. You can request special modules like hardware acceleration and OpenGL support. These are controlled by flags passed to pygame.display.set_mode().

Pygame can only have a single display active at any time. Creating a new one with pygame.display.set_mode() will close the previous display. If precise control is needed over the pixel format or display resolutions, use the functions pygame.display.mode_ok(), pygame.display.list_modes(), and pygame.display.Info() to query information about the display.

Once the display Surface is created, the functions from this module affect the single existing display. The Surface becomes invalid if the module is uninitialized. If a new display mode is set, the existing Surface will automatically switch to operate on the new display.

When the display mode is set, several events are placed on the pygame event queue. pygame.QUIT is sent when the user has requested the program to shut down. The window will receive pygame.ACTIVEEVENT events as the display gains and loses input focus. If the display is set with the pygame.RESIZABLE flag, pygame.VIDEORESIZE events will be sent when the user adjusts the window dimensions. Hardware displays that draw direct to the screen will get pygame.VIDEOEXPOSE events when portions of the window must be redrawn.

In pygame 2, there is a new type of event called pygame.WINDOWEVENT that is meant to replace all window related events like pygame.VIDEORESIZE, pygame.VIDEOEXPOSE and pygame.ACTIVEEVENT.

Note that the WINDOWEVENT API is considered experimental, and may change in future releases.

The new events of type pygame.WINDOWEVENT have an event attribute that can take the following values.

Value of event attribute      Short description

WINDOWEVENT_SHOWN            Window became shown
WINDOWEVENT_HIDDEN           Window became hidden
WINDOWEVENT_EXPOSED          Window got updated by some external event
WINDOWEVENT_MOVED            Window got moved
WINDOWEVENT_RESIZED          Window got resized
WINDOWEVENT_SIZE_CHANGED     Window changed it's size
WINDOWEVENT_MINIMIZED        Window was minimised
WINDOWEVENT_MAXIMIZED        Window was maximised
WINDOWEVENT_RESTORED         Window was restored
WINDOWEVENT_ENTER            Mouse entered the window
WINDOWEVENT_LEAVE            Mouse left the window
WINDOWEVENT_FOCUS_GAINED     Window gained focus
WINDOWEVENT_FOCUS_LOST       Window lost focus
WINDOWEVENT_CLOSE            Window was closed
WINDOWEVENT_TAKE_FOCUS       Window was offered focus
WINDOWEVENT_HIT_TEST         Window has a special hit test

If SDL version used is less than 2.0.5, the last two values WINDOWEVENT_TAKE_FOCUS and WINDOWEVENT_HIT_TEST will not work. See the SDL implementation (in C programming) of the same over here.

Some display environments have an option for automatically stretching all windows. When this option is enabled, this automatic stretching distorts the appearance of the pygame window. In the pygame examples directory, there is example code (prevent_display_stretching.py) which shows how to disable this automatic stretching of the pygame display on Microsoft Windows (Vista or newer required).

pygame.display.init()

Initialize the display module

init() -> None

Initializes the pygame display module. The display module cannot do anything until it is initialized. This is usually handled for you automatically when you call the higher level pygame.init().

Pygame will select from one of several internal display backends when it is initialized. The display mode will be chosen depending on the platform and permissions of current user. Before the display module is initialized the environment variable SDL_VIDEODRIVER can be set to control which backend is used. The systems with multiple choices are listed here.

Windows : windib, directx
Unix    : x11, dga, fbcon, directfb, ggi, vgl, svgalib, aalib

On some platforms it is possible to embed the pygame display into an already existing window. To do this, the environment variable SDL_WINDOWID must be set to a string containing the window id or handle. The environment variable is checked when the pygame display is initialized. Be aware that there can be many strange side effects when running in an embedded display.

It is harmless to call this more than once, repeated calls have no effect.

pygame.display.quit()

Uninitialize the display module

quit() -> None

This will shut down the entire display module. This means any active displays will be closed. This will also be handled automatically when the program exits.

It is harmless to call this more than once, repeated calls have no effect.

pygame.display.get_init()

Returns True if the display module has been initialized

get_init() -> bool

Returns True if the pygame.display module is currently initialized.

pygame.display.set_mode()

Initialize a window or screen for display

set_mode(size=(0, 0), flags=0, depth=0, display=0, vsync=0) -> Surface

This function will create a display Surface. The arguments passed in are requests for a display type. The actual created display will be the best possible match supported by the system.

The size argument is a pair of numbers representing the width and height. The flags argument is a collection of additional options. The depth argument represents the number of bits to use for color.

The Surface that gets returned can be drawn to like a regular Surface but changes will eventually be seen on the monitor.

If no size is passed or is set to (0, 0) and pygame uses SDL version 1.2.10 or above, the created Surface will have the same size as the current screen resolution. If only the width or height are set to 0, the Surface will have the same width or height as the screen resolution. Using a SDL version prior to 1.2.10 will raise an exception.

It is usually best to not pass the depth argument. It will default to the best and fastest color depth for the system. If your game requires a specific color format you can control the depth with this argument. Pygame will emulate an unavailable color depth which can be slow.

When requesting fullscreen display modes, sometimes an exact match for the requested size cannot be made. In these situations pygame will select the closest compatible match. The returned surface will still always match the requested size.

On high resolution displays(4k, 1080p) and tiny graphics games (640x480) show up very small so that they are unplayable. SCALED scales up the window for you. The game thinks it's a 640x480 window, but really it can be bigger. Mouse events are scaled for you, so your game doesn't need to do it. Note that SCALED is considered an experimental API and may change in future releases.

The flags argument controls which type of display you want. There are several to choose from, and you can even combine multiple types using the bitwise or operator, (the pipe "|" character). If you pass 0 or no flags argument it will default to a software driven window. Here are the display flags you will want to choose from:

pygame.FULLSCREEN    create a fullscreen display
pygame.DOUBLEBUF     recommended for HWSURFACE or OPENGL
pygame.HWSURFACE     hardware accelerated, only in FULLSCREEN
pygame.OPENGL        create an OpenGL-renderable display
pygame.RESIZABLE     display window should be sizeable
pygame.NOFRAME       display window will have no border or controls

Pygame 2 has the following additional flags available.

pygame.SCALED        resolution depends on desktop size and scale
                     graphics
pygame.SHOWN         window is opened in visible mode (default)
pygame.HIDDEN        window is opened in hidden mode

New in pygame 2.0.0: SCALED, SHOWN and HIDDEN

By setting the vsync parameter to 1, it is possible to get a display with vertical sync, but you are not guaranteed to get one. The request only works at all for calls to set_mode() with the pygame.OPENGL or pygame.SCALED flags set, and is still not guaranteed even with one of those set. What you get depends on the hardware and driver configuration of the system pygame is running on. Here is an example usage of a call to set_mode() that may give you a display with vsync:

flags = pygame.OPENGL | pygame.FULLSCREEN
window_surface = pygame.display.set_mode((1920, 1080), flags, vsync=1)

Vsync behaviour is considered experimental, and may change in future releases.

New in pygame 2.0.0: vsync

Basic example:

# Open a window on the screen
screen_width=700
screen_height=400
screen=pygame.display.set_mode([screen_width, screen_height])

The display index 0 means the default display is used.

Changed in pygame 1.9.5: display argument added

pygame.display.get_surface()

Get a reference to the currently set display surface

get_surface() -> Surface

Return a reference to the currently set display Surface. If no display mode has been set this will return None.

pygame.display.flip()

Update the full display Surface to the screen

flip() -> None

This will update the contents of the entire display. If your display mode is using the flags pygame.HWSURFACE and pygame.DOUBLEBUF, this will wait for a vertical retrace and swap the surfaces. If you are using a different type of display mode, it will simply update the entire contents of the surface.

When using an pygame.OPENGL display mode this will perform a gl buffer swap.

pygame.display.update()

Update portions of the screen for software displays

update(rectangle=None) -> None

update(rectangle_list) -> None

This function is like an optimized version of pygame.display.flip() for software displays. It allows only a portion of the screen to updated, instead of the entire area. If no argument is passed it updates the entire Surface area like pygame.display.flip().

You can pass the function a single rectangle, or a sequence of rectangles. It is more efficient to pass many rectangles at once than to call update multiple times with single or a partial list of rectangles. If passing a sequence of rectangles it is safe to include None values in the list, which will be skipped.

This call cannot be used on pygame.OPENGL displays and will generate an exception.

pygame.display.get_driver()

Get the name of the pygame display backend

get_driver() -> name

Pygame chooses one of many available display backends when it is initialized. This returns the internal name used for the display backend. This can be used to provide limited information about what display capabilities might be accelerated. See the SDL_VIDEODRIVER flags in pygame.display.set_mode() to see some of the common options.

pygame.display.Info()

Create a video display information object

Info() -> VideoInfo

Creates a simple object containing several attributes to describe the current graphics environment. If this is called before pygame.display.set_mode() some platforms can provide information about the default display mode. This can also be called after setting the display mode to verify specific display options were satisfied. The VidInfo object has several attributes:

hw:         1 if the display is hardware accelerated
wm:         1 if windowed display modes can be used
video_mem:  The megabytes of video memory on the display. This is 0 if
            unknown
bitsize:    Number of bits used to store each pixel
bytesize:   Number of bytes used to store each pixel
masks:      Four values used to pack RGBA values into pixels
shifts:     Four values used to pack RGBA values into pixels
losses:     Four values used to pack RGBA values into pixels
blit_hw:    1 if hardware Surface blitting is accelerated
blit_hw_CC: 1 if hardware Surface colorkey blitting is accelerated
blit_hw_A:  1 if hardware Surface pixel alpha blitting is accelerated
blit_sw:    1 if software Surface blitting is accelerated
blit_sw_CC: 1 if software Surface colorkey blitting is accelerated
blit_sw_A:  1 if software Surface pixel alpha blitting is accelerated
current_h, current_w:  Height and width of the current video mode, or
            of the desktop mode if called before the display.set_mode
            is called. (current_h, current_w are available since
            SDL 1.2.10, and pygame 1.8.0). They are -1 on error, or if
            an old SDL is being used.

pygame.display.get_wm_info()

Get information about the current windowing system

get_wm_info() -> dict

Creates a dictionary filled with string keys. The strings and values are arbitrarily created by the system. Some systems may have no information and an empty dictionary will be returned. Most platforms will return a "window" key with the value set to the system id for the current display.

New in pygame 1.7.1.

pygame.display.list_modes()

Get list of available fullscreen modes

list_modes(depth=0, flags=pygame.FULLSCREEN, display=0) -> list

This function returns a list of possible sizes for a specified color depth. The return value will be an empty list if no display modes are available with the given arguments. A return value of -1 means that any requested size should work (this is likely the case for windowed modes). Mode sizes are sorted from biggest to smallest.

If depth is 0, the current/best color depth for the display is used. The flags defaults to pygame.FULLSCREEN, but you may need to add additional flags for specific fullscreen modes.

The display index 0 means the default display is used.

Changed in pygame 1.9.5: display argument added

pygame.display.mode_ok()

Pick the best color depth for a display mode

mode_ok(size, flags=0, depth=0, display=0) -> depth

This function uses the same arguments as pygame.display.set_mode(). It is used to determine if a requested display mode is available. It will return 0 if the display mode cannot be set. Otherwise it will return a pixel depth that best matches the display asked for.

Usually the depth argument is not passed, but some platforms can support multiple display depths. If passed it will hint to which depth is a better match.

The most useful flags to pass will be pygame.HWSURFACE, pygame.DOUBLEBUF, and maybe pygame.FULLSCREEN. The function will return 0 if these display flags cannot be set.

The display index 0 means the default display is used.

Changed in pygame 1.9.5: display argument added

pygame.display.gl_get_attribute()

Get the value for an OpenGL flag for the current display

gl_get_attribute(flag) -> value

After calling pygame.display.set_mode() with the pygame.OPENGL flag, it is a good idea to check the value of any requested OpenGL attributes. See pygame.display.gl_set_attribute() for a list of valid flags.

pygame.display.gl_set_attribute()

Request an OpenGL display attribute for the display mode

gl_set_attribute(flag, value) -> None

When calling pygame.display.set_mode() with the pygame.OPENGL flag, Pygame automatically handles setting the OpenGL attributes like color and double-buffering. OpenGL offers several other attributes you may want control over. Pass one of these attributes as the flag, and its appropriate value. This must be called before pygame.display.set_mode().

Many settings are the requested minimum. Creating a window with an OpenGL context will fail if OpenGL cannot provide the requested attribute, but it may for example give you a stencil buffer even if you request none, or it may give you a larger one than requested.

The OPENGL flags are:

GL_ALPHA_SIZE, GL_DEPTH_SIZE, GL_STENCIL_SIZE, GL_ACCUM_RED_SIZE,
GL_ACCUM_GREEN_SIZE,  GL_ACCUM_BLUE_SIZE, GL_ACCUM_ALPHA_SIZE,
GL_MULTISAMPLEBUFFERS, GL_MULTISAMPLESAMPLES, GL_STEREO

GL_MULTISAMPLEBUFFERS

Whether to enable multisampling anti-aliasing. Defaults to 0 (disabled).

Set GL_MULTISAMPLESAMPLES to a value above 0 to control the amount of anti-aliasing. A typical value is 2 or 3.

GL_STENCIL_SIZE

Minimum bit size of the stencil buffer. Defaults to 0.

GL_DEPTH_SIZE

Minimum bit size of the depth buffer. Defaults to 16.

GL_STEREO

1 enables stereo 3D. Defaults to 0.

GL_BUFFER_SIZE

Minimum bit size of the frame buffer. Defaults to 0.

New in pygame 2.0.0: Additional attributes:

GL_ACCELERATED_VISUAL,
GL_CONTEXT_MAJOR_VERSION, GL_CONTEXT_MINOR_VERSION,
GL_CONTEXT_FLAGS, GL_CONTEXT_PROFILE_MASK,
GL_SHARE_WITH_CURRENT_CONTEXT,
GL_CONTEXT_RELEASE_BEHAVIOR,
GL_FRAMEBUFFER_SRGB_CAPABLE

GL_CONTEXT_PROFILE_MASK

Sets the OpenGL profile to one of these values:

GL_CONTEXT_PROFILE_CORE             disable deprecated features
GL_CONTEXT_PROFILE_COMPATIBILITY    allow deprecated features
GL_CONTEXT_PROFILE_ES               allow only the ES feature
                                    subset of OpenGL

GL_ACCELERATED_VISUAL

Set to 1 to require hardware acceleration, or 0 to force software render. By default, both are allowed.

pygame.display.get_active()

Returns True when the display is active on the screen

get_active() -> bool

Returns True when the display Surface is considered actively renderable on the screen and may be visible to the user. This is the default state immediately after pygame.display.set_mode(). This method may return True even if the application is fully hidden behind another application window.

This will return False if the display Surface has been iconified or minimized (either via pygame.display.iconify() or via an OS specific method such as the minimize-icon available on most desktops).

The method can also return False for other reasons without the application being explicitly iconified or minimized by the user. A notable example being if the user has multiple virtual desktops and the display Surface is not on the active virtual desktop.

Note

This function returning True is unrelated to whether the application has input focus. Please see pygame.key.get_focused() and pygame.mouse.get_focused() for APIs related to input focus.

pygame.display.iconify()

Iconify the display surface

iconify() -> bool

Request the window for the display surface be iconified or hidden. Not all systems and displays support an iconified display. The function will return True if successful.

When the display is iconified pygame.display.get_active() will return False. The event queue should receive an ACTIVEEVENT event when the window has been iconified. Additionally, the event queue also recieves a WINDOWEVENT_MINIMIZED event when the window has been iconified on pygame 2.

pygame.display.toggle_fullscreen()

Switch between fullscreen and windowed displays

toggle_fullscreen() -> int

Switches the display window between windowed and fullscreen modes. Display driver support is not great when using pygame 1, but with pygame 2 it is the most reliable method to switch to and from fullscreen.

Supported display drivers in pygame 1:

• x11 (Linux/Unix)
• wayland (Linux/Unix)

Supported display drivers in pygame 2:

• windows (Windows)
• x11 (Linux/Unix)
• wayland (Linux/Unix)
• cocoa (OSX/Mac)

pygame.display.set_gamma()

Change the hardware gamma ramps

set_gamma(red, green=None, blue=None) -> bool

Set the red, green, and blue gamma values on the display hardware. If the green and blue arguments are not passed, they will both be the same as red. Not all systems and hardware support gamma ramps, if the function succeeds it will return True.

A gamma value of 1.0 creates a linear color table. Lower values will darken the display and higher values will brighten.

pygame.display.set_gamma_ramp()

Change the hardware gamma ramps with a custom lookup

set_gamma_ramp(red, green, blue) -> bool

Set the red, green, and blue gamma ramps with an explicit lookup table. Each argument should be sequence of 256 integers. The integers should range between 0 and 0xffff. Not all systems and hardware support gamma ramps, if the function succeeds it will return True.

pygame.display.set_icon()

Change the system image for the display window

set_icon(Surface) -> None

Sets the runtime icon the system will use to represent the display window. All windows default to a simple pygame logo for the window icon.

You can pass any surface, but most systems want a smaller image around 32x32. The image can have colorkey transparency which will be passed to the system.

Some systems do not allow the window icon to change after it has been shown. This function can be called before pygame.display.set_mode() to create the icon before the display mode is set.

pygame.display.set_caption()

Set the current window caption

set_caption(title, icontitle=None) -> None

If the display has a window title, this function will change the name on the window. Some systems support an alternate shorter title to be used for minimized displays.

pygame.display.get_caption()

Get the current window caption

get_caption() -> (title, icontitle)

Returns the title and icontitle for the display Surface. These will often be the same value.

pygame.display.set_palette()

Set the display color palette for indexed displays

set_palette(palette=None) -> None

This will change the video display color palette for 8-bit displays. This does not change the palette for the actual display Surface, only the palette that is used to display the Surface. If no palette argument is passed, the system default palette will be restored. The palette is a sequence of RGB triplets.

pygame.display.get_num_displays()

Return the number of displays

get_num_displays() -> int

Returns the number of available displays. This is always 1 if pygame.get_sdl_version() returns a major version number below 2.

New in pygame 1.9.5.

pygame.display.get_window_size()

Return the size of the window or screen

get_window_size() -> tuple

Returns the size of the window initialized with pygame.display.set_mode(). This may differ from the size of the display surface if SCALED is used.

New in pygame 2.0.0.

pygame.display.get_allow_screensaver()

Return whether the screensaver is allowed to run.

get_allow_screensaver() -> bool

Return whether screensaver is allowed to run whilst the app is running. Default is False. By default pygame does not allow the screensaver during game play.

Note

Some platforms do not have a screensaver or support disabling the screensaver. Please see pygame.display.set_allow_screensaver() for caveats with screensaver support.

New in pygame 2.0.0.

pygame.display.set_allow_screensaver()

Set whether the screensaver may run

set_allow_screensaver(bool) -> None

Change whether screensavers should be allowed whilst the app is running. The default is False. By default pygame does not allow the screensaver during game play.

If the screensaver has been disallowed due to this function, it will automatically be allowed to run when pygame.quit() is called.

It is possible to influence the default value via the environment variable SDL_HINT_VIDEO_ALLOW_SCREENSAVER, which can be set to either 0 (disable) or 1 (enable).

Note

Disabling screensaver is subject to platform support. When platform support is absent, this function will silently appear to work even though the screensaver state is unchanged. The lack of feedback is due to SDL not providing any supported method for determining whether it supports changing the screensaver state. SDL_HINT_VIDEO_ALLOW_SCREENSAVER is available in SDL 2.0.2 or later. SDL1.2 does not implement this.

New in pygame 2.0.0.