The ScrollView widget in Kivy framework encloses any other widget having dimensions larger than the size allocated to it, and provides a scrollable panel to it. This enables the enclosed widget to be panned/scrolled vertically or horizontally.

The ScrollView class is defined in kivy.uix.scrollview module. You normally compose one or more widgets in a layout and add the layout to the ScrollView.

from kivy.uix.scrollview import ScrollView
view = ScrollView()
view.add_widget(layout)

The “scroll_x” and “scroll_y” properties of a ScrollView object control the scrolling behavior of the scroll panel. The ScollView enables scrolling in both directions. You can disable on an axis by setting “do_scroll_x” or “do_scroll_y” to False.

Further, the “scroll_distance” property sets the minimum distance to travel, defaults to 20 pixels. Additionally, the scroll_timeout property specifies the maximum time period which is by default 55 milliseconds.

The significance of “scroll_distance” and “scroll_timeout” is this: If the number of pixels scrolled by the touch gesture is more than or equal to scroll_distance, and it is within the scroll_timeout period, it is recognized as a scrolling gesture and translation (scroll/pan) will begin. If the timeout occurs, the touch down event is propagated to the child instead.

Other properties of ScrollView class are given below −

• do_scroll − Allow scroll on X or Y axis.

• do_scroll_x − Allow scroll on X axis. This is a BooleanProperty and defaults to True.

• do_scroll_y − Allow scroll on Y axis. This is a BooleanProperty and defaults to True.

• scroll_distance − Distance to move before scrolling the ScrollView, in pixels. It is a NumericProperty and defaults to 20 pixels.

• scroll_timeout − Timeout allowed to trigger the scroll_distance, in milliseconds, default being 55 ms

• scroll_to() − Scrolls the viewport to ensure that the given widget is visible, optionally with padding and animation.

• scroll_type − Sets the type of scrolling to use for the content of the scrollview. Available options are: [”content”], [”bars”], [”bars”, ”content”].

• The ScrollView object emits following events −

  • on_scroll_start − Generic event fired when scrolling starts from touch.

  • on_scroll_move − Generic event fired when scrolling move from touch.

  • on_scroll_stop − Generic event fired when scrolling stops from touch.

Example

To be able to understand the working of ScrollView, we need a layout large enough, so that it overflows the dimensions of the main application window. For this purpose, we add 1oo buttons to a one-column gridlayout, and apply scrollview to it.

The operative code in the following example is given below −

layout = GridLayout(cols=1)

for i in range(100):
   btn = Button(text=''Button '' + str(i), size_hint_y=None, height=40)
   layout.add_widget(btn)

root = ScrollView()
root.add_widget(layout)

To make sure the height is such that there is something to scroll, bind the layout object”s minimum_height property to its setter.

layout.bind(minimum_height=layout.setter(''height''))

Here is the complete code for ScrollView demo code −

from kivy.uix.gridlayout import GridLayout
from kivy.uix.button import Button
from kivy.uix.scrollview import ScrollView
from kivy.app import App
from kivy.core.window import Window

Window.size = (720, 350)

class scrollableapp(App):
   def build(self):
      layout = GridLayout(cols=1, spacing=10, size_hint_y=None)
      layout.bind(minimum_height=layout.setter(''height''))

      for i in range(100):
         btn = Button(text=''Button '' + str(i), size_hint_y=None, height=40)
         layout.add_widget(btn)
      
      root = ScrollView(
         size_hint=(1, None),
         size=(Window.width, Window.height)
      )
      root.add_widget(layout)
      return root

scrollableapp().run()

Output

Run the above code. To go beyond the buttons visible in the view, scroll vertically with mouse, or fingers if you are working on a touch-enabled device.