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This blog post will explain how to select multiple files with a tkinter file dialog box with python.

The tkinter library is imported so that a graphical user interface can be coded. The filedialog library from tkinter has to be imported because it will be used to create a file dialog box.

import tkinter as tk
from tkinter import filedialog as fd

A tkinter object is created and stored in the variable root.

root = tk.Tk()

The statement below will hide the main window since load and save file dialogs don’t need the window.

root.withdraw()

The filetypes variable is set to two audio file extensions.

filetypes = (
    ('mp3', '*.mp3'),
    ('m4a', '*.m4a')
)

The function askopenfilenames will retrieve a selection of file names and store it in the variable filenames as a list.

filenames = fd.askopenfilenames(
    title='Open multiple files.',
    initialdir='/',
    filetypes=filetypes)

A simple for loop will print out the filenames stored in the variable filenames.

for x in filenames:
    print(x)

The root object is destroyed.

root.destroy()

A main loop is executed for the program.

root.mainloop()

This is what the whole source code looks like.

import tkinter as tk
from tkinter import filedialog as fd

root = tk.Tk()
root.withdraw()

filetypes = (
    ('mp3', '*.mp3'),
    ('m4a', '*.m4a')
)

filenames = fd.askopenfilenames(
    title='Open multiple files.',
    initialdir='/',
    filetypes=filetypes)
   
for x in filenames:
    print(x)

root.destroy()

root.mainloop()