Tkinter tkMessageBox disables Tkinter key bindings
Here's a very simple example: from Tkinter import * import tkMessageBox def quit(event): exit() root = Tk() root.bind("<Escape>", quit) #tkMessageBox.showinfo("title", "message") root.mainloop() If I run the code exactly as it is, the program will terminate when Esc is hit. Now, if I un-comment the tkMessageBox line, the binding is "lost" after closing the message box, i.e. pressing Esc won't do anything anymore. This is happening in Python 2.7. Can you please verify if this is happening also to you? And let me know about your Python version. Here is a way to "by-pass" the problem. It's a