Pygame Mouse Input: Clicks, Position and Dragging

The mouse, like the keyboard, comes as events (a button went down) and as state (where the pointer is now). This program draws a dot where you click and a ring that follows the pointer:

import pygame

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((480, 320))
clock = pygame.time.Clock()
dots = []
running = True

while running:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False
        elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN:
            if event.button == 1:
                dots.append(event.pos)
            elif event.button == 3:
                dots.clear()

    screen.fill((250, 248, 240))
    for pos in dots:
        pygame.draw.circle(screen, (230, 80, 90), pos, 10)
    pygame.draw.circle(screen, (60, 60, 80), pygame.mouse.get_pos(), 16, width=2)
    pygame.display.flip()
    clock.tick(60)

pygame.quit()

Press Play and click in the game. A right click clears the dots.

Mouse events

event.button is 1 for left, 2 for middle and 3 for right.

Mouse state

A clickable button

A button is a Rect plus a check: is the click inside it? Rect.collidepoint answers that.

import pygame

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((480, 320))
clock = pygame.time.Clock()
font = pygame.font.Font(None, 36)

button = pygame.Rect(0, 0, 200, 60)
button.center = (240, 160)
clicks = 0
running = True

while running:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False
        elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN and event.button == 1:
            if button.collidepoint(event.pos):
                clicks += 1

    hover = button.collidepoint(pygame.mouse.get_pos())
    screen.fill((28, 30, 46))
    pygame.draw.rect(screen, (90, 170, 255) if hover else (60, 120, 210), button, border_radius=12)
    label = font.render(f"Clicked {clicks}", True, "white")
    screen.blit(label, label.get_rect(center=button.center))
    pygame.display.flip()
    clock.tick(60)

pygame.quit()

The button lights up under the pointer and counts clicks. Menus, inventory slots and level select screens are built the same way.

Dragging

Dragging uses all three events: pick up on MOUSEBUTTONDOWN if the click is on the object, move on MOUSEMOTION by event.rel, drop on MOUSEBUTTONUP.

import pygame

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((480, 320))
clock = pygame.time.Clock()

boxes = [pygame.Rect(60 + i * 130, 130, 70, 70) for i in range(3)]
colors = [(240, 100, 100), (100, 200, 120), (100, 150, 240)]
held = None
running = True

while running:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False
        elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN and event.button == 1:
            for i, box in enumerate(boxes):
                if box.collidepoint(event.pos):
                    held = i
        elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONUP and event.button == 1:
            held = None
        elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEMOTION and held is not None:
            boxes[held].move_ip(event.rel)

    screen.fill((245, 242, 235))
    for box, color in zip(boxes, colors):
        pygame.draw.rect(screen, color, box, border_radius=10)
    pygame.display.flip()
    clock.tick(60)

pygame.quit()

Drag the boxes around. For one finger on a touch screen, pygame turns taps into mouse events too, so the same code works there.