[Question] How to make IconButton not focusable?

[mnesarco]

Question

IconButton has no "can_focus" property. I am using it in a form and it makes tab navigation difficult because focus. Flutter has FocusScope, but apparently is is not available in Flet.

Context: Desktop App

How to exclude IconButton from focus navigation?

Code sample

ft.IconButton(
    icon=icon or ft.Icons.MORE_HORIZ_ROUNDED,
    on_click=pick_dir,
    can_focus=False,  # <-- THIS DOES NOT EXISTS
)

Error message

No response

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• I have searched for answers to my question both in the issues and in previous discussions.

[MrTONYCHAN]

You are not missing a hidden IconButton option: if the Flet version you are using does not expose can_focus/skip_traversal or a wrapper equivalent to Flutter’s ExcludeFocus/Focus, there is no reliable Python-side property that removes only that button from keyboard traversal.

A keyboard handler can intercept Tab, but it is not a good substitute—it can break reverse traversal, platform conventions and accessibility. Likewise, disabling the button removes it from focus but also removes the intended action.

So I would treat this as a missing Flet API and request an exposed property such as can_focus=False (mapped to Focus(canRequestFocus: false, skipTraversal: true)) or an ExcludeFocus control. Until that exists, the safest workaround is to redesign the form’s traversal so the button’s focus is harmless, or use an adjacent menu/control that already provides appropriate keyboard behavior. It is better to keep one extra accessible tab stop than to implement custom Tab interception that traps keyboard users.

[mnesarco]

Ok, but I decided to go 100% on native flutter (dart) for UI and calling a small python backend only when required. by this way i can get 100% of flutter power and 100% of python convenience.

[MrTONYCHAN]

That sounds like a sensible architecture for your requirements. Keeping the UI in native Flutter gives you full access to focus traversal, accessibility and the complete Flutter widget ecosystem, while the Python service can remain responsible for the domain logic that benefits from Python.

Thanks for sharing the direction you chose—it may help others facing the same Flet API limitation.