I Tried Building a Desktop App With 5 Python Tools — Here’s What Actually Worked

For a long time, “desktop apps” felt like a relic.

Web apps were trendy. APIs were cool. Automation scripts lived quietly in cron jobs and GitHub repos. Desktop apps? They felt… old.

Then I ran into a real problem.

I had Python scripts that worked. They automated tasks, processed files, scraped data, and saved me hours. But every time someone asked,

“Can you make this usable for non-technical people?”

I froze.

Handing someone a .py file and saying “just install Python, pip, and these 12 dependencies” is not a solution. It’s a cry for help.

So I did what I always do:
I stopped asking “Which Python tool should I use?”
and started asking:

“What’s the simplest way to turn working automation into something people can actually use?”

Over a few months, I built the same desktop app five times, using five different Python tools.

Some were surprisingly good.
Some looked good… until they didn’t.
One almost made me quit desktop apps entirely.