How do I use a progress bar when my script is doing some task that is likely to take time?

For example, a function which takes some time to complete and returns True when done. How can I display a progress bar during the time the function is being executed?

Note that I need this to be in real time, so I can't figure out what to do about it. Do I need a thread for this? I have no idea.

Right now I am not printing anything while the function is being executed, however a progress bar would be nice. Also I am more interested in how this can be done from a code point of view.

5

42 Answers

1 2

With tqdm (conda install tqdm or pip install tqdm) you can add a progress meter to your loops in a second:

from time import sleep from tqdm import tqdm for i in tqdm(range(10)): sleep(3) 60%|██████ | 6/10 [00:18<00:12, 0.33 it/s] 

Also, there is a notebook version:

from tqdm.notebook import tqdm for i in tqdm(range(100)): sleep(3) 

You can use tqdm.auto instead of tqdm.notebook to work in both a terminal and notebooks.

tqdm.contrib contains some helper functions to do things like enumerate, map, and zip. There are concurrent maps in tqdm.contrib.concurrent.

You can even get progress sent to your phone after disconnecting from a jupyter notebook using tqdm.contrib.telegram or tqdm.contrib.discord.

GIF showing an example of the output of using tqdm.contrib.telegram to display progress bar in Telegram mobile app

16

There are specific libraries (like this one here) but maybe something very simple would do:

import time import sys toolbar_width = 40 # setup toolbar sys.stdout.write("[%s]" % (" " * toolbar_width)) sys.stdout.flush() sys.stdout.write("\b" * (toolbar_width+1)) # return to start of line, after '[' for i in xrange(toolbar_width): time.sleep(0.1) # do real work here # update the bar sys.stdout.write("-") sys.stdout.flush() sys.stdout.write("]\n") # this ends the progress bar 

Note: progressbar2 is a fork of progressbar which hasn't been maintained in years.

11

Use alive-progress, the coolest progress bar ever!

GIF showing an example of alive-progress

To use any progress bar framework in a useful manner, i.e. to get a percentage of completion and an estimated time of arrival (ETA), you need to be able to tell how many steps your processing will have.

Then you can just insert an yield to mark an item has been processed, and you're good to go!

def compute(): for i in range(1000): ... # process items as usual. yield # insert this :) 

Then just use it like:

from alive_progress import alive_bar with alive_bar(1000) as bar: for i in compute(): bar() 

To get an awesome and alive progress bar!

|█████████████▎ | ▅▃▁ 321/1000 [32%] in 8s (40.1/s, eta: 16s) 

Disclosure: I'm the author of alive-progress, but it should solve your problem nicely! Read the documentation at to know more. Now it works also on Jupyter Notebooks! Here are some more examples of what it can do:

GIF showing various styles of alive-progress

GIF showing alive-progress on Jupyter Notebooks

8

No external packages. A ready-made piece of code.

You can customize bar progress symbol '#', bar size, text prefix etc.

Python 3.3+

import sys def progressbar(it, prefix="", size=60, out=sys.stdout): # Python3.3+ count = len(it) def show(j): x = int(size*j/count) print("{}[{}{}] {}/{}".format(prefix, u"#"*x, "."*(size-x), j, count), end='\r', file=out, flush=True) show(0) for i, item in enumerate(it): yield item show(i+1) print("\n", flush=True, file=out) 

Usage:

import time for i in progressbar(range(15), "Computing: ", 40): time.sleep(0.1) # any code you need 

If you prefer, for example, a unicode u"█" char to fill the whole character space. Changing from u"#"and using for i in progressbar(range(100)): ... you get :

enter image description here

  • Doesn't require a second thread. Some solutions/packages above require.

  • Works with any iterable it means anything that len() can be used on. A list, a dict of anything for example ['a', 'b', 'c' ... 'g']

  • Works with generators only have to wrap it with a list(). For example for i in progressbar(list(your_generator), "Computing: ", 40): Unless the work is done in the generator. In that case you need another solution (like tqdm).

You can also change output by changing out to sys.stderr for example.

Python 2 (old-code)

import sys def progressbar(it, prefix="", size=60, out=sys.stdout): count = len(it) def show(j): x = int(size*j/count) out.write("%s[%s%s] %i/%i\r" % (prefix, u"#"*x, "."*(size-x), j, count)) out.flush() show(0) for i, item in enumerate(it): yield item show(i+1) out.write("\n") out.flush() 
7

The above suggestions are pretty good, but I think most people just want a ready made solution, with no dependencies on external packages, but is also reusable.

I got the best points of all the above, and made it into a function, along with a test cases.

To use it, just copy the lines under "def update_progress(progress)" but not the test script. Don't forget to import sys. Call this whenever you need to display or update the progress bar.

This works by directly sending the "\r" symbol to console to move cursor back to the start. "print" in python does not recongise the above symbol for this purpose, hence we need 'sys'

import time, sys # update_progress() : Displays or updates a console progress bar ## Accepts a float between 0 and 1. Any int will be converted to a float. ## A value under 0 represents a 'halt'. ## A value at 1 or bigger represents 100% def update_progress(progress): barLength = 10 # Modify this to change the length of the progress bar status = "" if isinstance(progress, int): progress = float(progress) if not isinstance(progress, float): progress = 0 status = "error: progress var must be float\r\n" if progress < 0: progress = 0 status = "Halt...\r\n" if progress >= 1: progress = 1 status = "Done...\r\n" block = int(round(barLength*progress)) text = "\rPercent: [{0}] {1}% {2}".format( "#"*block + "-"*(barLength-block), progress*100, status) sys.stdout.write(text) sys.stdout.flush() # update_progress test script print "progress : 'hello'" update_progress("hello") time.sleep(1) print "progress : 3" update_progress(3) time.sleep(1) print "progress : [23]" update_progress([23]) time.sleep(1) print "" print "progress : -10" update_progress(-10) time.sleep(2) print "" print "progress : 10" update_progress(10) time.sleep(2) print "" print "progress : 0->1" for i in range(101): time.sleep(0.1) update_progress(i/100.0) print "" print "Test completed" time.sleep(10) 

This is what the result of the test script shows (The last progress bar animates):

progress : 'hello' Percent: [----------] 0% error: progress var must be float progress : 3 Percent: [##########] 100% Done... progress : [23] Percent: [----------] 0% error: progress var must be float progress : -10 Percent: [----------] 0% Halt... progress : 10 Percent: [##########] 100% Done... progress : 0->1 Percent: [##########] 100% Done... Test completed 
5

Try progress from .

from progress.bar import Bar bar = Bar('Processing', max=20) for i in range(20): # Do some work bar.next() bar.finish() 

The result will be a bar like the following:

Processing |############# | 42/100 
3

for a similar application (keeping track of the progress in a loop) I simply used the python-progressbar:

Their example goes something like this,

from progressbar import * # just a simple progress bar widgets = ['Test: ', Percentage(), ' ', Bar(marker='0',left='[',right=']'), ' ', ETA(), ' ', FileTransferSpeed()] #see docs for other options pbar = ProgressBar(widgets=widgets, maxval=500) pbar.start() for i in range(100,500+1,50): # here do something long at each iteration pbar.update(i) #this adds a little symbol at each iteration pbar.finish() print 
2

I've just made a simple progress class for my needs after searching here for a equivalent solution. I thought I might a well post it.

from __future__ import print_function import sys import re class ProgressBar(object): DEFAULT = 'Progress: %(bar)s %(percent)3d%%' FULL = '%(bar)s %(current)d/%(total)d (%(percent)3d%%) %(remaining)d to go' def __init__(self, total, width=40, fmt=DEFAULT, symbol='=', output=sys.stderr): assert len(symbol) == 1 self.total = total self.width = width self.symbol = symbol self.output = output self.fmt = re.sub(r'(?P<name>%\(.+?\))d', r'\g<name>%dd' % len(str(total)), fmt) self.current = 0 def __call__(self): percent = self.current / float(self.total) size = int(self.width * percent) remaining = self.total - self.current bar = '[' + self.symbol * size + ' ' * (self.width - size) + ']' args = { 'total': self.total, 'bar': bar, 'current': self.current, 'percent': percent * 100, 'remaining': remaining } print('\r' + self.fmt % args, file=self.output, end='') def done(self): self.current = self.total self() print('', file=self.output) 

Example :

from time import sleep progress = ProgressBar(80, fmt=ProgressBar.FULL) for x in xrange(progress.total): progress.current += 1 progress() sleep(0.1) progress.done() 

Will print the following:

[======== ] 17/80 ( 21%) 63 to go

2

You can use tqdm:

from tqdm import tqdm with tqdm(total=100, desc="Adding Users", bar_format="{l_bar}{bar} [ time left: {remaining} ]") as pbar: for i in range(100): time.sleep(3) pbar.update(1) 

In this example the progress bar is running for 5 minutes and it is shown like that:

Adding Users: 3%|█████▊ [ time left: 04:51 ] 

You can change it and customize it as you like.

I like Brian Khuu's answer for its simplicity and not needing external packages. I changed it a bit so I'm adding my version here:

import sys import time def updt(total, progress): """ Displays or updates a console progress bar. Original source: """ barLength, status = 20, "" progress = float(progress) / float(total) if progress >= 1.: progress, status = 1, "\r\n" block = int(round(barLength * progress)) text = "\r[{}] {:.0f}% {}".format( "#" * block + "-" * (barLength - block), round(progress * 100, 0), status) sys.stdout.write(text) sys.stdout.flush() runs = 300 for run_num in range(runs): time.sleep(.1) updt(runs, run_num + 1) 

It takes the total number of runs (total) and the number of runs processed so far (progress) assuming total >= progress. The result looks like this:

[#####---------------] 27% 

I really like the python-progressbar, as it is very simple to use.

For the most simple case, it is just:

import progressbar import time progress = progressbar.ProgressBar() for i in progress(range(80)): time.sleep(0.01) 

The appearance can be customized and it can display the estimated remaining time. For an example use the same code as above but with:

progress = progressbar.ProgressBar(widgets=[progressbar.Bar('=', '[', ']'), ' ', progressbar.Percentage(), ' ', progressbar.ETA()]) 

Use this library: fish (GitHub).

Usage:

>>> import fish >>> while churning: ... churn_churn() ... fish.animate() 

Have fun!

1

If it is a big loop with a fixed amount of iterations that is taking a lot of time you can use this function I made. Each iteration of loop adds progress. Where count is the current iteration of the loop, total is the value you are looping to and size(int) is how big you want the bar in increments of 10 i.e. (size 1 =10 chars, size 2 =20 chars)

import sys def loadingBar(count,total,size): percent = float(count)/float(total)*100 sys.stdout.write("\r" + str(int(count)).rjust(3,'0')+"/"+str(int(total)).rjust(3,'0') + ' [' + '='*int(percent/10)*size + ' '*(10-int(percent/10))*size + ']') 

example:

for i in range(0,100): loadingBar(i,100,2) #do some code 

output:

i = 50 >> 050/100 [========== ] 
1

The code below is a quite general solution and also has a time elapsed and time remaining estimate. You can use any iterable with it. The progress bar has a fixed size of 25 characters but it can show updates in 1% steps using full, half, and quarter block characters. The output looks like this:

 18% |████▌ | \ [0:00:01, 0:00:06] 

Code with example:

import sys, time from numpy import linspace def ProgressBar(iterObj): def SecToStr(sec): m, s = divmod(sec, 60) h, m = divmod(m, 60) return u'%d:%02d:%02d'%(h, m, s) L = len(iterObj) steps = {int(x):y for x,y in zip(linspace(0, L, min(100,L), endpoint=False), linspace(0, 100, min(100,L), endpoint=False))} qSteps = ['', u'\u258E', u'\u258C', u'\u258A'] # quarter and half block chars startT = time.time() timeStr = ' [0:00:00, -:--:--]' activity = [' -',' \\',' |',' /'] for nn,item in enumerate(iterObj): if nn in steps: done = u'\u2588'*int(steps[nn]/4.0)+qSteps[int(steps[nn]%4)] todo = ' '*(25-len(done)) barStr = u'%4d%% |%s%s|'%(steps[nn], done, todo) if nn>0: endT = time.time() timeStr = ' [%s, %s]'%(SecToStr(endT-startT), SecToStr((endT-startT)*(L/float(nn)-1))) sys.stdout.write('\r'+barStr+activity[nn%4]+timeStr); sys.stdout.flush() yield item barStr = u'%4d%% |%s|'%(100, u'\u2588'*25) timeStr = ' [%s, 0:00:00]\n'%(SecToStr(time.time()-startT)) sys.stdout.write('\r'+barStr+timeStr); sys.stdout.flush() # Example s = '' for c in ProgressBar(list('Disassemble and reassemble this string')): time.sleep(0.2) s += c print(s) 

Suggestions for improvements or other comments are appreciated. Cheers!

A simple oneliner:

K = 628318 for k in range(K): # your stuff print(end="\r|%-80s|" % ("="*int(80*k/(K-1)))) 
|===================================================================== | 

80 is the length of the bar. Eventually you want a final print().

And not to forget the digital progress indicator:

K = 628318 for k in range(K): # your stuff print(end="\r%6.2f %%" % (k/(K-1)*100)) 
 94.53 % 

It is not to difficult to combine both, if needed.

The keys are the "Carriage Return" \r and the suppression of the default end="\n" in print.

It is quite straightforward in Python3:

 import time import math def show_progress_bar(bar_length, completed, total): bar_length_unit_value = (total / bar_length) completed_bar_part = math.ceil(completed / bar_length_unit_value) progress = "*" * completed_bar_part remaining = " " * (bar_length - completed_bar_part) percent_done = "%.2f" % ((completed / total) * 100) print(f'[{progress}{remaining}] {percent_done}%', end='\r') bar_length = 30 total = 100 for i in range(0, total + 1): show_progress_bar(bar_length, i, total) time.sleep(0.1) print('\n') 

When running in jupyter notebooks use of normal tqdm doesn't work, as it writes output on multiple lines. Use this instead:

import time from tqdm import tqdm_notebook as tqdm for i in tqdm(range(100)) time.sleep(0.5) 

I like this page.

Starts with simple example and moves onto a multi-threaded version. Works out of the box. No 3rd party packages required.

The code will look something like this:

import time import sys def do_task(): time.sleep(1) def example_1(n): for i in range(n): do_task() print '\b.', sys.stdout.flush() print ' Done!' print 'Starting ', example_1(10) 

Or here is example to use threads in order to run the spinning loading bar while the program is running:

import sys import time import threading class progress_bar_loading(threading.Thread): def run(self): global stop global kill print 'Loading.... ', sys.stdout.flush() i = 0 while stop != True: if (i%4) == 0: sys.stdout.write('\b/') elif (i%4) == 1: sys.stdout.write('\b-') elif (i%4) == 2: sys.stdout.write('\b\\') elif (i%4) == 3: sys.stdout.write('\b|') sys.stdout.flush() time.sleep(0.2) i+=1 if kill == True: print '\b\b\b\b ABORT!', else: print '\b\b done!', kill = False stop = False p = progress_bar_loading() p.start() try: #anything you want to run. time.sleep(1) stop = True except KeyboardInterrupt or EOFError: kill = True stop = True 

I used format() method to make a load bar. Here is my solution:

import time loadbarwidth = 23 for i in range(1, loadbarwidth + 1): time.sleep(0.1) strbarwidth = '[{}{}] - {}\r'.format( (i * '#'), ((loadbarwidth - i) * '-'), (('{:0.2f}'.format(((i) * (100/loadbarwidth))) + '%')) ) print(strbarwidth ,end = '') print() 

Output:

[#######################] - 100.00% 
1

Here's a short solution that builds the loading bar programmatically (you must decide how long you want it).

import time n = 33 # or however many loading slots you want to have load = 0.01 # artificial loading time! loading = '.' * n # for strings, * is the repeat operator for i in range(n+1): # this loop replaces each dot with a hash! print('\r%s Loading at %3d percent!' % (loading, i*100/n), end='') loading = loading[:i] + '#' + loading[i+1:] time.sleep(load) if i==n: print() 
1

2022 Answer for simple progress bar without external library

import time, sys def progress(size): for item in range(size): if(item==0): print("[",end="") elif(item==size-1): print("]",end="\n") else: #main work goes here time.sleep(0.1) print("%",end="") sys.stdout.flush() progress(50) 

If your work can't be broken down into measurable chunks, you could call your function in a new thread and time how long it takes:

import thread import time import sys def work(): time.sleep( 5 ) def locked_call( func, lock ): lock.acquire() func() lock.release() lock = thread.allocate_lock() thread.start_new_thread( locked_call, ( work, lock, ) ) # This part is icky... while( not lock.locked() ): time.sleep( 0.1 ) while( lock.locked() ): sys.stdout.write( "*" ) sys.stdout.flush() time.sleep( 1 ) print "\nWork Done" 

You can obviously increase the timing precision as required.

1

I like Gabriel answer, but i changed it to be flexible. You can send bar-length to the function and get your progress bar with any length that you want. And you can't have a progress bar with zero or negative length. Also, you can use this function like Gabriel answer (Look at the Example #2).

import sys import time def ProgressBar(Total, Progress, BarLength=20, ProgressIcon="#", BarIcon="-"): try: # You can't have a progress bar with zero or negative length. if BarLength <1: BarLength = 20 # Use status variable for going to the next line after progress completion. Status = "" # Calcuting progress between 0 and 1 for percentage. Progress = float(Progress) / float(Total) # Doing this conditions at final progressing. if Progress >= 1.: Progress = 1 Status = "\r\n" # Going to the next line # Calculating how many places should be filled Block = int(round(BarLength * Progress)) # Show this Bar = "[{}] {:.0f}% {}".format(ProgressIcon * Block + BarIcon * (BarLength - Block), round(Progress * 100, 0), Status) return Bar except: return "ERROR" def ShowBar(Bar): sys.stdout.write(Bar) sys.stdout.flush() if __name__ == '__main__': print("This is a simple progress bar.\n") # Example #1: print('Example #1') Runs = 10 for i in range(Runs + 1): progressBar = "\rProgress: " + ProgressBar(10, i, Runs) ShowBar(progressBar) time.sleep(1) # Example #2: print('\nExample #2') Runs = 10 for i in range(Runs + 1): progressBar = "\rProgress: " + ProgressBar(10, i, 20, '|', '.') ShowBar(progressBar) time.sleep(1) print('\nDone.') # Example #2: Runs = 10 for i in range(Runs + 1): ProgressBar(10, i) time.sleep(1) 

Result:

This is a simple progress bar.

Example #1

Progress: [###-------] 30%

Example #2

Progress: [||||||||||||........] 60%

Done.

Guess i'm a little late but this should work for people working with the current versions of python 3, since this uses "f-strings", as introduced in Python 3.6 PEP 498:

Code

from numpy import interp class Progress: def __init__(self, value, end, title='Downloading',buffer=20): self.title = title #when calling in a for loop it doesn't include the last number self.end = end -1 self.buffer = buffer self.value = value self.progress() def progress(self): maped = int(interp(self.value, [0, self.end], [0, self.buffer])) print(f'{self.title}: [{"#"*maped}{"-"*(self.buffer - maped)}]{self.value}/{self.end} {(()*100):.2f}%', end='\r') 

Example

#some loop that does perfroms a task for x in range(21) #set to 21 to include until 20 Progress(x, 21) 

Output

Downloading: [########------------] 8/20 40.00% 

Use the progress library!

pip install progress 

Here is a custom subclass I wrote to format the ETA/Elapsed times into a better readable format:

import datetime from progress.bar import IncrementalBar class ProgressBar(IncrementalBar): ''' My custom progress bar that: - Show %, count, elapsed, eta - Time is shown in H:M:S format ''' message = 'Progress' suffix = '%(percent).1f%% (%(index)d/%(max)d) -- %(elapsed_min)s (eta: %(eta_min)s)' def formatTime(self, seconds): return str(datetime.timedelta(seconds=seconds)) @property def elapsed_min(self): return self.formatTime(self.elapsed) @property def eta_min(self): return self.formatTime(self.eta) if __name__=='__main__': counter = 120 bar = ProgressBar('Processing', max=counter) for i in range(counter): bar.next() time.sleep(1) bar.finish() 

This is my simple solution:

import time def progress(_cur, _max): p = round(100*_cur/_max) b = f"Progress: {p}% - ["+"."*int(p/5)+" "*(20-int(p/5))+"]" print(b, end="\r") # USAGE: for i in range(0,101): time.sleep(0.1) progress(i,100) print("..."*5, end="\r") print("Done") 

A very simple approach:

def progbar(count: int) -> None: for i in range(count): print(f"[{i*'#'}{(count-1-i)*' '}] - {i+1}/{count}", end="\r") yield i print('\n') 

And the usage:

from time import sleep for i in progbar(10): sleep(0.2) #whatever task you need to do 
1

Try PyProg. PyProg is an open-source library for Python to create super customizable progress indicators & bars.

It is currently at version 1.0.2; it is hosted on Github and available on PyPI (Links down below). It is compatible with Python 3 & 2 and it can also be used with Qt Console.

It is really easy to use. The following code:

import pyprog from time import sleep # Create Object prog = pyprog.ProgressBar(" ", "", 34) # Update Progress Bar prog.update() for i in range(34): # Do something sleep(0.1) # Set current status prog.set_stat(i + 1) # Update Progress Bar again prog.update() # Make the Progress Bar final prog.end() 

will produce:

Initial State: Progress: 0% -------------------------------------------------- When half done: Progress: 50% #########################------------------------- Final State: Progress: 100% ################################################## 

I actually made PyProg because I needed a simple but super customizable progress bar library. You can easily install it with: pip install pyprog.

PyProg Github:
PyPI:

You can also use enlighten. The main advantage is you can log at the same time without overwriting your progress bar.

import time import enlighten manager = enlighten.Manager() pbar = manager.counter(total=100) for num in range(1, 101): time.sleep(0.05) print('Step %d complete' % num) pbar.update() 

It also handles multiple progress bars.

import time import enlighten manager = enlighten.Manager() odds = manager.counter(total=50) evens = manager.counter(total=50) for num in range(1, 101): time.sleep(0.05) if num % 2: odds.update() else: evens.update() 

a little more generic answer of jelde015 (credit to him of course)

for updating the loading bar manually will be:

import sys from math import * def loadingBar(i, N, size): percent = float(i) / float(N) sys.stdout.write("\r" + str(int(i)).rjust(3, '0') +"/" +str(int(N)).rjust(3, '0') + ' [' + '='*ceil(percent*size) + ' '*floor((1-percent)*size) + ']') 

and calling it by:

loadingBar(7, 220, 40) 

will result:

007/220 [= ] 

just call it whenever you want with the current i value.

set the size as the number of chars the bar should be

1 2

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