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Tkinter apps can't be distributed on the macOS App Store #129247
Description
Bug report
Bug description:
If you use tkinter in your app, and package the app for distribution in the macOS App Store, the app will be rejected with a message to the effect that:
Guideline 2.5.1 - Performance - Software Requirements
Your app uses or references the following non-public or deprecated APIs:
Contents/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/libtk8.6.dylib
Symbols:
• _NSWindowDidOrderOnScreenNotification
The use of non-public or deprecated APIs is not permitted on the App Store, as they can lead to a poor user experience should these APIs change and are otherwise not supported on Apple platforms.
(or similar).
This appears to be a known issue in Tk.
This ticket is mostly to log the issue as something that can affect macOS users; there's not much we can do to fix it until such time as Tk fixes the problem and releases the fix in a version that Python can incorporate into a release (or, I guess, Apple changes their App Store review policies).
CPython versions tested on:
3.14, 3.13, 3.12, 3.11, 3.10, 3.9, CPython main branch
Operating systems tested on:
macOS
Activity
hoodmane commentedon Jan 24, 2025
Maybe you could patch tkinter.so to stub out the symbol to a trap?
freakboy3742 commentedon Jan 24, 2025
I'm not sure that would actually fix the problem - the issue is the existence of the symbol at all. Apple's already demonstrated that their app rejection processes rely heavily on fairly naïve pattern matches (see #120522); I wouldn't be at all surprised that if you wrote some code that just happened to use the name
_NSWindowDidOrderOnScreenNotificationas a symbol, it would be rejected, even if the code had nothing to do with Cocoa.It's also an issue internal to the Tk dylib, not the
tkinter.soPython module; so this sort of approach would require doing binary patching (or source patching) one of our upstream dependencies.... just so people can put Tk apps in the App Store. I'm not convinced that juice is worth the squeeze.serhiy-storchaka commentedon Sep 22, 2026
Fixed upstream: Tk no longer references the private
NSWindowDidOrderOnScreenNotification(a9969f7ffd). The fix is in the 9.0 branch and in 9.1b1, so it will be in Tk 9.0.5; it was not backported to 8.6, and applications which need the App Store have to ship Tk 9.