Great question! Getting grid-based layouts to play nice with window resizing is a common hurdle, but once you wrap your head around columnconfigure and rowconfigure (plus a few critical details), it clicks pretty quickly. Let’s break this down step by step with concrete examples.

The Foundation: weight Parameter in columnconfigure/rowconfigure #

The key to resizing lies in the weight argument—this tells Tkinter how to distribute extra space when the window grows or shrinks. By default, all columns and rows have a weight of 0, meaning they won’t absorb any extra space. Setting weight to a positive number lets that column/row claim a share of the additional space.

For example, to make your main window’s first column and row stretch with the window:

import tkinter as tk

root = tk.Tk()
root.title("Resizable Grid Demo")

# Configure main window's column 0 and row 0 to take extra space
root.columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
root.rowconfigure(0, weight=1)

# Add a frame to the grid
content_frame = tk.Frame(root, bg="lightblue")
content_frame.grid(row=0, column=0)

root.mainloop()

Wait—if you run this, you’ll notice the window resizes, but the frame stays tiny. That’s because we haven’t told the frame to fill its assigned cell.

Make Widgets Fill Their Cells with sticky #

The sticky parameter controls how a widget anchors itself inside its grid cell. By default, widgets stick to the top-left corner (nw). To make a widget stretch to fill the entire cell, use sticky="nsew" (north, south, east, west)—this pins the widget to all four edges of the cell.

Update the frame’s grid call:

content_frame.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky="nsew")

Now the frame will resize along with the window.

Nested Layouts: Don’t Forget Child Containers #

If you have widgets inside the frame (like a text box or buttons), you need to repeat the process for the frame’s columns and rows too. Let’s add a text widget that fills the frame:

# Configure the frame's column 0 and row 0 to stretch
content_frame.columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
content_frame.rowconfigure(0, weight=1)

# Add a text widget that fills the frame
text_box = tk.Text(content_frame)
text_box.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky="nsew")

Now the text box will resize with both the frame and the main window.

Multiple Columns/Rows with Proportional Resizing #

You can set different weight values to create proportional resizing. For example, if you want two columns where the first takes twice as much space as the second:

root.columnconfigure(0, weight=2)  # 2 parts of extra space
root.columnconfigure(1, weight=1)  # 1 part of extra space

frame1 = tk.Frame(root, bg="lightblue")
frame1.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky="nsew")

frame2 = tk.Frame(root, bg="pink")
frame2.grid(row=0, column=1, sticky="nsew")

When you resize the window, frame1 will grow twice as fast as frame2.

Critical Details to Avoid Mistakes #

• weight is relative: The actual space a column/row gets is based on the ratio of its weight to the sum of all weights. For example, weights 3, 1, 1 mean the first column gets 3/5 of extra space.
• Fixed-size widgets: If a widget has a fixed width or height, sticky might not stretch it (Tkinter respects fixed sizes). Use grid_propagate(False) on the parent container only if you intentionally want to ignore the widget’s natural size.
• Apply to all levels: Every container (window, frame, labelframe) that holds resizable widgets needs its own columnconfigure/rowconfigure settings. Don’t skip nested containers!

That’s the core of it—once you get these pieces down, you can build fully resizable grid layouts without missing any key details.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者mikel bubi