Common xlabel ylabel for matplotlib subplots

Question

I have the following plot   fig ax   plt subplots 5 2 sharex True sharey True figsize fig size    and now I would like to give this plot common x-axis labels and y-axis labels  With  common   I mean that there should be one big x-axis label below the whole grid of subplots  and one big y-axis label to the right  I can t find anything about this in the documentation for plt subplots  and my googlings suggest that I need to make a big plt subplot 111  to start with - but how do I then put my 5 2 subplots into that using plt subplots

User · Answer

Since I consider it relevant and elegant enough (no need to specify coordinates to place text), I copy (with a slight adaptation) an answer to another related question.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig, axes = plt.subplots(5, 2, sharex=True, sharey=True, figsize=(6,15))
# add a big axis, hide frame
fig.add_subplot(111, frameon=False)
# hide tick and tick label of the big axis
plt.tick_params(labelcolor='none', top=False, bottom=False, left=False, right=False)
plt.xlabel("common X")
plt.ylabel("common Y")

This results in the following (with matplotlib version 2.2.0):

User · Answer

I ran into a similar problem while plotting a grid of graphs  The graphs consisted of two parts  top and bottom   The y-label was supposed to be centered over both parts   I did not want to use a solution that depends on knowing the position in the outer figure  like fig text     so I manipulated the y-position of the set ylabel   function  It is usually 0 5  the middle of the plot it is added to  As the padding between the parts  hspace  in my code was zero  I could calculate the middle of the two parts relative to the upper part   import matplotlib pyplot as plt import matplotlib gridspec as gridspec    Create outer and inner grid outerGrid   gridspec GridSpec 2  3  width ratios  1 1 1   height ratios  1 1   somePlot   gridspec GridSpecFromSubplotSpec 2  1                 subplot spec outerGrid 3   height ratios  1 3   hspace   0     Add two partial plots partA   plt subplot somePlot 0   partB   plt subplot somePlot 1      No x-ticks for the upper plot plt setp partA get xticklabels    visible False     The center is  height top -height bottom    2 height top     Simplified to 0 5 - height bottom   2 height top   mid   0 5-somePlot get height ratios   1   2  somePlot get height ratios   0     Place the y-label partA set ylabel  shared label   y   mid   plt show     picture  Downsides    The horizontal distance to the plot is based on the top part  the bottom ticks might extend into the label  The formula does not take space between the parts into account  Throws an exception when the height of the top part is 0    There is probably a general solution that takes padding between figures into account

User · Answer

Update   This feature is now part of the proplot matplotlib package that I recently released on pypi  By default  when you make figures  the labels are  shared  between axes     Original answer   I discovered a more robust method   If you know the bottom and top kwargs that went into a GridSpec initialization  or you otherwise know the edges positions of your axes in Figure coordinates  you can also specify the ylabel position in Figure coordinates with some fancy  transform  magic  For example   import matplotlib transforms as mtransforms bottom  top    1   9 f  a   plt subplots nrows 2  ncols 1  bottom bottom  top top  avepos    bottom top  2 a 0  yaxis label set transform mtransforms blended transform factory         mtransforms IdentityTransform    f transFigure   specify x  y transform             changed from default blend  IdentityTransform    a 0  transAxes  a 0  yaxis label set position  0  avepos   a 0  set ylabel  Hello  world         and you should see that the label still appropriately adjusts left-right to keep from overlapping with ticklabels  just like normal -- but now it will adjust to be always exactly between the desired subplots   Furthermore  if you don t even use set position  the ylabel will show up by default exactly halfway up the figure  I m guessing this is because when the label is finally drawn  matplotlib uses 0 5 for the y-coordinate without checking whether the underlying coordinate transform has changed

User · Answer

It will look better if you reserve space for the common labels by making invisible labels for the subplot in the bottom left corner  It is also good to pass in the fontsize from rcParams  This way  the common labels will change size with your rc setup  and the axes will also be adjusted to leave space for the common labels   fig size    8  6  fig  ax   plt subplots 5  2  sharex True  sharey True  figsize fig size    Reserve space for axis labels ax -1  0  set xlabel      color  0  0  0  0   ax -1  0  set ylabel      color  0  0  0  0     Make common axis labels fig text 0 5  0 04   common X   va  center   ha  center   fontsize rcParams  axes labelsize    fig text 0 04  0 5   common Y   va  center   ha  center   rotation  vertical   fontsize rcParams  axes labelsize

User · Answer

Without sharex True  sharey True you get     With it you should get it nicer   fig  axes2d   plt subplots nrows 3  ncols 3                             sharex True  sharey True                             figsize  6 6    for i  row in enumerate axes2d       for j  cell in enumerate row           cell imshow np random rand 32 32    plt tight layout       But if you want to add additional labels  you should add them only to the edge plots   fig  axes2d   plt subplots nrows 3  ncols 3                             sharex True  sharey True                             figsize  6 6    for i  row in enumerate axes2d       for j  cell in enumerate row           cell imshow np random rand 32 32           if i    len axes2d  - 1              cell set xlabel  noise column   0 d   format j   1           if j    0              cell set ylabel  noise row   0 d   format i   1    plt tight layout       Adding label for each plot would spoil it  maybe there is a way to automatically detect repeated labels  but I am not aware of one

User · Answer

New in Matplotlib v3 4  not available in pip yet  clone from source  supxlabel  supylabel See example  import matplotlib pyplot as plt  for tl  cl in zip  True  False  False    False  False  True        fig   plt figure constrained layout cl  tight layout tl       gs   fig add gridspec 2  3       ax   dict        ax  A     fig add subplot gs 0  0 2       ax  B     fig add subplot gs 1  0 2       ax  C     fig add subplot gs    2        ax  C   set xlabel  Booger       ax  B   set xlabel  Booger       ax  A   set ylabel  Booger Y       fig suptitle f TEST  tight layout  tl  constrained layout  cl        fig supxlabel  XLAgg       fig supylabel  YLAgg            plt show       see more

User · Answer

This looks like what you actually want  It applies the same approach of this answer to your specific case  import matplotlib pyplot as plt  fig  ax   plt subplots nrows 3  ncols 3  sharex True  sharey True  figsize  6  6    fig text 0 5  0 04   common X   ha  center   fig text 0 04  0 5   common Y   va  center   rotation  vertical

User · Answer

Since the command   fig ax   plt subplots 5 2 sharex True sharey True figsize fig size    you used returns a tuple consisting of the figure and a list of the axes instances  it is already sufficient to do something like  mind that I ve changed fig axto fig axes    fig axes   plt subplots 5 2 sharex True sharey True figsize fig size   for ax in axes      ax set xlabel  Common x-label       ax set ylabel  Common y-label     If you happen to want to change some details on a specific subplot  you can access it via axes i  where i iterates over your subplots   It might also be very helpful to include a  fig tight layout     at the end of the file  before the plt show    in order to avoid overlapping labels

[python] Common xlabel/ylabel for matplotlib subplots

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