here are the most useful dialogsdialog description askopenfilename opens typical file chooser dialog askopenfilenames like previousbut user can pick more than one file asksaveasfilename opens typical file save dialog askdirectory opens directory chooser dialog the return value of askopenfilename and asksaveasfilename is the name of the file selected there is no return value if the user does not pick value the return value of askopenfilenames is list of fileswhich is empty if no files are selected the askdirectory function returns the name of the directory chosen there are some options you can pass to these functions you can set initialdir to the directory you want the dialog to start in you can also specify the file types here is an examplefilename=askopenfilename(initialdir' :\\python \'filetypes=['image files 'jpg png gif ')'all files ''')] short example here is an example that opens file dialog that allows you to select text file the program then displays the contents of the file in textbox from tkinter import from tkinter filedialog import from tkinter scrolledtext import scrolledtext root tk(textbox scrolledtext(textbox grid(filename=askopenfilename(initialdir' :\\python \'filetypes=['text files 'txt ')