Here is what I came up with - hopefully I have understood the process correctly and therefore that the comments are correct :-)
I am not sure I have the color of the indicator when it is (de)pressed correct, but to my eyes the color 'snow' looks like the same color used with a Tkinter Checkbutton with indicatoron=false. r = Tk() s = Style() # create a layout that excludes the indicator element s.layout('NoIndicator.TCheckbutton', [('Checkbutton.border', {'children': [('Checkbutton.padding', {'children': [('Checkbutton.label', {})]})]})]) # Now create(?) a 'setting' for the border appearance of the checkbutton s.theme_settings('default', { 'NoIndicator.TCheckbutton': {'configure': {'relief': ''}}}) # set the attributes of the 'setting' to provide the required behaviour s.map('NoIndicator.TCheckbutton', relief=[('disabled', 'flat'), ('selected', 'sunken'), ('pressed', 'sunken'), ('active', 'raised'), ('!active', 'raised')], background=[('selected', 'snow')]) button = Checkbutton(r, text='Test', style='NoIndicator.TCheckbutton') button.pack() r.mainloop() -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list