Python 3.x support has been a topic of discussion here for years, and I finally have some news on that front. :)

As I've teased a bit earlier on Twitter, I'm working on a version of Pythonista that is based on Python 3.5.1 instead of the current 2.7.5. I've made pretty good progress recently, and the app is already in a completely usable state with most custom and third-party modules working. The app's UI is essentially identical to Pythonista 2.0.

Things that are working so far:

• Python 3.5.1 with all new syntax features and most standard library modules (exceptions are basically the same as in 2.x, i.e. mostly Tkinter)
• Numpy, matplotlib, Pillow, PyCrypto, and most other third-party modules that are currently included in Pythonista 2.0 (in some cases more recent versions than in 2.0)
• Most custom modules (ui, scene, contacts, reminders, ...)

Not working yet:

• A few custom modules (currently only notification, editor, and canvas)
• The app extension (invoking Pythonista from the share sheet)
• The URL scheme
• The documentation browser
• The example scripts aren't completely ported yet
• A couple of third-party modules that are included in Pythonista 2.0, but aren't (yet?) compatible with Python 3 (screenplain, midiutil, mechanize, xhtml2pdf)

There are probably still a few bugs in the ported versions of my custom modules. Getting the string/unicode handling to work right has been tricky in some cases, and I haven't tested all modules very thoroughly yet.

I expect that I'll have the first beta ready within the next week or so, hopefully without some of the limitations I've listed above. I'll post a new beta signup form here when I'm ready.

Lastly, this will be a separate app, or "paid upgrade" if you will. This is, by the way, one of the reasons I did not charge for the 2.0 update. It'll co-exist with Pythonista 2.x for a while because there are still valid reasons to prefer Python 2.7, and I don't want to force people to upgrade to a version that is not backwards-compatible.

As I've mentioned before, creating an app that supports both Python 2 and 3 would be very difficult, if not impossible. The only way this could theoretically work would require relaunching the app in order to switch versions, and I honestly think that having Python 3 in a separate app will result in a better user experience and less confusion. It will be possible to access files in Pythonista 2.x from 3.x though (and vice-versa).

I'll put this here as a sticky post, so that it's easier to find, without digging through old threads...

We now have a Slack chat for discussing all things Pythonista, and everyone who's interested can sign up here:

→ Join Pythonista Slack

This is not intended to be a replacement for the forum. In a lot of cases, it is much more useful to post questions and feedback here because the forum content is indexed by search enginees, available publicly (without signing up for anything), and generally more long-lived. A lot of questions come up more than once, and it's useful to be able to link to forum topics later.

Note: This topic is locked, but if you have any trouble with the Slack signup, please feel free to create a new thread.

Good news: Pythonista 2 has been approved by Apple, and will be out on Monday (tomorrow).

I would recommend that all beta users do a backup before updating because I'm not completely sure if a clean update will be possible from the beta. Actually, you might also want to do this if you are not using the beta, just to be sure. There's always a possibility that something goes wrong with a major update like this.

2.0 will be a free update for existing users, but I intend to increase the price for new purchases to $9.99 (version 1.5 is currently $6.99).

@ccc @OI

The final version of Python 3.6 is still quite a long way off, so I'm not too concerned about that...

The current beta is taking a bit longer because I'm in the process of making some pretty substantial changes. In short, I've found out that my assumptions about using Python 2 + 3 in the same app were incorrect, and that it is in fact possible to do this, even without having to restart the app when switching interpreters.

As I really only want to have one version of Pythonista, to avoid confusion and backwards-compatibility woes, my current plan is to make Pythonista 3 support both Python 2.7 and 3.5. It's actually working quite well already, but there are just a lot of little details to consider, things to move around, refactor, etc.

This doesn't change my plan to make this a paid upgrade btw.

I've just built a little script to make it easier to share UI scripts. Sometimes, it's just more convenient to have everything in a single file for simple copy/paste – this basically generates code to load the UI from an embedded (compressed) string instead of from an external .pyui file.

Here's the code:

EmbedPyui.py (Gist)

(some more details about how to use it in the docstring)

And this is an example of what the generated code looks like (this is from the bundled ColorMixer example):

data = '''\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'''
import ui
import bz2
from base64 import b64decode
pyui = bz2.decompress(b64decode(data))
v = ui.load_view_str(pyui.decode('utf-8'))

Should work in Pythonista 2 and 3 (beta).

I've started working on a file picker dialog that I might add to the dialogs module. You can find the code here:

→ File Picker.py (works in Pythonista 2 and 3)

The API isn't exactly like you suggested, but similar, and quite extensible. As a demo, I've implemented an alternative "data source" that shows files and folders from an FTP server instead of the local file system. It would easily be possible to build a Zip file browser with this as well...

The idea is basically that you can subclass TreeNode to represent whatever kind of tree structure you need. The TreeDialogController gets one TreeNode as its root and a couple of options (multiple selection etc.). The TreeNode is then responsible for loading its children (each of the children is also a TreeNode), and each node has a title/icon that is shown in the table view. For cases when a node might take a relatively long time to load its children, TreeDialogController has an async_mode option that causes it to automatically dispatch the loading to a background thread, and to show a spinner overlay while loading.

Overall, the UI is very close to Pythonista's own directory picker, i.e. I'm using the same icons, table view animations, etc.

Someone asked me on Twitter if Pythonista had support for scanning barcodes, using the camera. While there's nothing like that built-in, I looked around a bit, and it turns out that there are APIs for this in Apple's AVFoundation framework, so I thought it might be interesting to build a wrapper around that.

This demo shows a live camera preview, and it plays a sound when a barcode or QR code is found in the viewfinder. The scanned code (a number for EAN codes, URLs or text for QR codes...) is shown in an overlay label. When the view is closed, a list of all (unique) codes that were scanned is printed to the console.

Here's the code: Barcode Scanner.py (Gist)

And a screenshot:

Here's a first attempt at a Python 3-based Xcode template: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5l94m0xjbot5je0/Pythonista3AppTemplate.zip?dl=1

This is roughly equivalent to the current App Store version (not the 3.3 beta), and not final, just something to play around with for people interested in the Xcode template. Let me know if anything's unclear.

I'm making progress... There's still a lot left to do, but it's looking good so far.

I think this could be a useful addition to the dialogs module.

I’m guessing most people who frequent this forum already have Pythonista, but just in case you’ve been holding off, or know someone to gift it to: Pythonista is currently 50% off on the App Store, until Sunday, to celebrate Pi day (3/14).

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pythonista-3/id1085978097?ls=1&mt=8

If you want to do me a HUGE favor, please go and post a 5-star review on the App Store (scroll down in Pythonista’s settings and tap “Rate Pythonista”) – only if you really like the app, of course, but it helps a lot to have some recent reviews up there, and even just a star rating would be much appreciated. Thanks!

@JonB Yes, I'm using a pregenerated keyword index, though I guess using jedi to extract docstrings could be an interesting option as well, might be more accessible than a script hook.

@cvp That's certainly true (and thanks for the kind words!), and I can definitely see both use cases, but running a script hook would allow you to do that as well, I guess.

@cvp I don't know, I would guess that augmenting the search results with online sources could potentially be more useful, not sure though.

I'm truly impressed by what you've been able to accomplish in such a short amount of time! It might even make sense to provide a built-in hook for this kind of thing, not quite sure yet about the implications.

If you're currently viewing the file browser, you have to swipe left twice to get to the interactive prompt, but make sure that you swipe anywhere except on the keyboard.

With an external keyboard, you can also get to the prompt by pressing Cmd+J, maybe followed by Cmd+Return (in case the keyboard isn't already active in the editor).

Please make sure that you have Full Access enabled for the Pythonista keyboard in the Settings app. Otherwise, there is no way for the keyboard and the app to share any files (because that could theoretically be abused to transfer input data over the network, so you basically need to "trust" the keyboard to enable these things).

For debugging widgets, you could e.g. write log files that you would read in the main app.

One general tip for widgets: In case you use webbrowser.open() in your widget, try removing the webbrowser import and use import shortcuts; shortcuts.open_url(...) instead. It's more efficient.

Not really... To be honest, if I could remove that feature without annoying a bunch of people, I probably would. Today widgets are just so extremely limited in memory that even just running the interpreter pushes it almost to its limits, and it becomes extremely likely that user scripts run into memory limitations very quickly... This is much less of an issue in Pythonista's other app extensions (the custom keyboard and share sheet) as those types of extensions get a more comfortable amount of RAM to work with.

Cool, I had never heard of Sherlock before, and haven't tried your port yet, but it looks like an interesting use case for Pythonista. 👍