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Controlling the environment

Many environment variables are available to control the initialization and behavior of Kivy.

For example, in order to restrict text rendering to the PIL implementation:

$ KIVY_TEXT=pil python main.py

Environment variables should be set before importing kivy:

import os
os.environ['KIVY_TEXT'] = 'pil'
import kivy

Path control

New in version 1.0.7.

You can control the default directories where config files, modules and kivy data are located.

KIVY_DATA_DIR

Location of the Kivy data, defaults to <kivy path>/data

KIVY_MODULES_DIR

Location of the Kivy modules, defaults to <kivy path>/modules

KIVY_HOME

Location of the Kivy home. This directory is used for local configuration, and must be in a writable location.

Defaults to:

  • Desktop: <user home>/.kivy

  • Android: <android app path>/.kivy

  • iOS: <user home>/Documents/.kivy

New in version 1.9.0.

KIVY_DESKTOP_PATH_ID

Sets a user-facing, human-readable application title for desktop platform directories. This makes it easy for end users to identify which application owns which directories when browsing their filesystem.

Important: Setting this creates an application-specific location for the .kivy directory containing the config and log files. Without KIVY_DESKTOP_PATH_ID, the config and logs are placed in a single global .kivy directory shared by all Kivy applications. This allows multiple Kivy applications to have isolated configuration and log directories.

When set, the identifier is normalized for filesystem safety (invalid characters like /\:*?”<>| are replaced with underscores) and used to construct KIVY_HOME, user_data_dir, and user_cache_dir paths.

Use this to display a clear, recognizable name like “My Photo Editor” or “Company App Name” instead of technical identifiers.

If not set on desktop platforms, the path construction falls back to using App.name (a string derived from your App class name). A warning is logged recommending you set KIVY_DESKTOP_PATH_ID for better end-user clarity.

Takes priority over KIVY_HOME environment variable and virtual environment detection. Ignored on mobile platforms (iOS, Android) where file systems are not user-browsable.

Note for mobile developers: If you are developing a mobile app on a desktop platform, you can set KIVY_DESKTOP_PATH_ID to any value to suppress the warning. The variable will have no effect on your mobile app, but setting it prevents the warning during development.

Example paths when set to “My Photo Editor”:

  • Windows: %APPDATA%\\My_Photo_Editor\\.kivy

  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/My_Photo_Editor/.kivy

  • Linux: ~/.local/share/My_Photo_Editor/.kivy

New in version 3.0.0.

KIVY_SDL3_PATH

If set, the SDL3 libraries and headers from this path are used when compiling kivy instead of the ones installed system-wide. To use the same libraries while running a kivy app, this path must be added at the start of the PATH environment variable.

New in version 3.0.0.

Warning

This path is required for the compilation of Kivy. It is not required for program execution.

KIVY_SDL3_FRAMEWORKS_SEARCH_PATH

If set, the SDL3 frameworks from this path are used when compiling kivy instead of the ones installed system-wide.

That path is used only on macOS, and must contain the SDL3.framework, SDL_image.framework, SDL_mixer.framework and SDL_ttf.framework.

New in version 3.0.0.

Warning

This path is required for the compilation of Kivy. It is not required for program execution.

KIVY_DEPS_ROOT

If set, during build, Kivy will use this directory as the root one to search for (only SDL ATM) dependencies. Please note that if KIVY_SDL3_PATH or KIVY_SDL3_FRAMEWORKS_SEARCH_PATH are set, they will be used instead.

New in version 2.2.0.

Warning

This path is required for the compilation of Kivy. It is not required for program execution.

Configuration

KIVY_USE_DEFAULTCONFIG

If this name is found in environ, Kivy will not read the user config file.

KIVY_NO_CONFIG

If set, no configuration file will be read or written to. This also applies to the user configuration directory.

KIVY_NO_FILELOG

If set, logs will be not print to a file

KIVY_NO_CONSOLELOG

If set, logs will be not print to the console

KIVY_NO_ARGS

If set to one of (‘true’, ‘1’, ‘yes’), the argument passed in command line will not be parsed and used by Kivy. Ie, you can safely make a script or an app with your own arguments without requiring the – delimiter:

import os
os.environ["KIVY_NO_ARGS"] = "1"
import kivy

New in version 1.9.0.

KCFG_section_key

If a such format environment name is detected, it will be mapped to the Config object. They are loaded only once when kivy is imported. The behavior can be disabled using KIVY_NO_ENV_CONFIG.

import os
os.environ["KCFG_KIVY_LOG_LEVEL"] = "warning"
import kivy
# during import it will map it to:
# Config.set("kivy", "log_level", "warning")

New in version 1.11.0.

KIVY_NO_ENV_CONFIG

If set, no environment key will be mapped to configuration object. If unset, any KCFG_section_key=value will be mapped to Config.

New in version 1.11.0.

Restrict core to specific implementation

kivy.core try to select the best implementation available for your platform. For testing or custom installation, you might want to restrict the selector to a specific implementation.

You can specify multiple providers as a comma-separated list to set the priority order. Kivy will try each provider in the order listed, using the first one that successfully initializes. For example:

$ KIVY_IMAGE=sdl3,pil python main.py

Or in Python:

import os
os.environ['KIVY_IMAGE'] = 'sdl3,pil'
import kivy

This will try the sdl3 image provider first, and fall back to pil if sdl3 is unavailable or the file format is not supported by sdl3.

Some core modules also support selecting providers on a per-instance basis, allowing different objects to use different provider implementations within the same application. See the following modules for details:

KIVY_WINDOW

Implementation to use for creating the Window

Values: sdl3, x11, egl_rpi

KIVY_TEXT

Implementation to use for rendering text

Values: sdl3, pil, sdlttf

KIVY_VIDEO

Implementation to use for rendering video

Values: gstplayer, ffpyplayer, ffmpeg, android , null

KIVY_AUDIO_OUTPUT

Implementation to use for playing audio

Values: sdl3, gstplayer, ffpyplayer, avplayer

KIVY_IMAGE

Implementation to use for reading image

Values: sdl3, pil, imageio, tex, dds

Changed in version 2.0.0.

Removed GPL gif implementation

KIVY_CAMERA

Implementation to use for reading camera

Values: avfoundation, android, opencv

KIVY_SPELLING

Implementation to use for spelling

Values: enchant, osxappkit

KIVY_CLIPBOARD

Implementation to use for clipboard management

Values: sdl3, dummy, android

Metrics

KIVY_DPI

If set, the value will be used for Metrics.dpi.

New in version 1.4.0.

KIVY_METRICS_DENSITY

If set, the value will be used for Metrics.density.

New in version 1.5.0.

KIVY_METRICS_FONTSCALE

If set, the value will be used for Metrics.fontscale.

New in version 1.5.0.

Graphics

KIVY_GL_BACKEND

The OpenGL backend to use. See cgl.

KIVY_GL_DEBUG

Whether to log OpenGL calls. See cgl.

KIVY_GRAPHICS

Whether to use OpenGL ES2. See cgl.

KIVY_GLES_LIMITS

Whether the GLES2 restrictions are enforced (the default, or if set to 1). If set to false, Kivy will not be truly GLES2 compatible.

Following is a list of the potential incompatibilities that result when set to true.

Mesh indices

If true, the number of indices in a mesh is limited to 65535

Texture blit

When blitting to a texture, the data (color and buffer) format must be the same format as the one used at the texture creation. On desktop, the conversion of different color is correctly handled by the driver, while on Android, most of devices fail to do it. Ref: https://github.com/kivy/kivy/issues/1600

New in version 1.8.1.

KIVY_BCM_DISPMANX_ID

Change the default Raspberry Pi display to use when using the egl_rpi window provider. The list of available value is accessible in vc_dispmanx_types.h. Default value is 0:

  • 0: DISPMANX_ID_MAIN_LCD

  • 1: DISPMANX_ID_AUX_LCD

  • 2: DISPMANX_ID_HDMI

  • 3: DISPMANX_ID_SDTV

  • 4: DISPMANX_ID_FORCE_LCD

  • 5: DISPMANX_ID_FORCE_TV

  • 6: DISPMANX_ID_FORCE_OTHER

KIVY_BCM_DISPMANX_LAYER

Change the default Raspberry Pi dispmanx layer when using the egl_rpi window provider. Default value is 0.

New in version 1.10.1.

Event Loop

KIVY_EVENTLOOP

Which async library should be used when the app is run in an asynchronous manner. See kivy.app for example usage.

'asyncio': When the app is run in an asynchronous manner and the standard

library asyncio package should be used. The default if not set.

'trio': When the app is run in an asynchronous manner and the trio

package should be used.

New in version 2.0.0.

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