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

The article explains how to create a desktop pet application on Windows using Python and the PyQt5 library.

It first describes the required visual assets, recommending white‑background GIFs for normal and click animations, and shows three ways to obtain them: exporting from video with Premiere, assembling in Photoshop, or downloading from the web.

Next, the project structure is outlined (main.py as entry point, normal/ and click/ folders for GIFs, dialog.txt for speech lines) and the full source code is presented.

Key code sections include importing the necessary modules:

import os

import sys

import random

from PyQt5.QtGui import *

from PyQt5.QtCore import *

from PyQt5.QtWidgets import *

The DesktopPet class sets a frameless, always‑on‑top window, enables transparent background, and creates a system‑tray icon with “Show” and “Quit” actions.

Methods init() , initPall() , and initPetImage() initialize the window, tray, and load GIFs and dialog text, while petNormalAction() uses QTimer to periodically change the pet’s animation and speech.

Interaction is handled by overriding mousePressEvent , mouseMoveEvent , mouseReleaseEvent , enterEvent , and contextMenuEvent to support dragging, changing cursor, and showing a context menu for hide/quit.

Finally, the article shows how to package the program with PyInstaller using pyinstaller -F -w main.py and notes that the generated main.exe must be placed in the project root to run correctly.