Rotate axis text in python matplotlib

Question

I can t figure out how to rotate the text on the X Axis   Its a time stamp  so as the number of samples increase  they get closer and closer until they overlap   I d like to rotate the text 90 degrees so as the samples get closer together  they aren t overlapping   Below is what I have  it works fine with the exception that I can t figure out how to rotate the X axis text   import sys  import matplotlib matplotlib use  Agg   import matplotlib pyplot as plt import datetime  font     family     normal            weight     bold            size      8   matplotlib rc  font     font   values   open  stats csv    r   readlines    time    datetime datetime fromtimestamp float i split      0  strip     for i in values 1    delay    float i split      1  strip    for i in values 1     plt plot time  delay  plt grid b  on    plt savefig  test png

User · Answer

If you want to apply rotation on the axes object, the easiest way is using tick_params. For example.

ax.tick_params(axis='x', labelrotation=90)

Matplotlib documentation reference here.

This is useful when you have an array of axes as returned by plt.subplots, and it is more convenient than using set_xticks because in that case you need to also set the tick labels, and also more convenient that those that iterate over the ticks (for obvious reasons)

User · Answer

To rotate the x-axis label to 90 degrees   for tick in ax get xticklabels        tick set rotation 45

User · Answer

If using plt   plt xticks rotation 90    In case of using pandas or seaborn to plot  assuming ax as axes for the plot   ax set xticklabels ax get xticklabels    rotation 90    Another way of doing the above   for tick in ax get xticklabels        tick set rotation 45

User · Answer

The simplest solution is to use   plt xticks rotation XX    but also     Tweak spacing to prevent clipping of tick-labels plt subplots adjust bottom X XX    e g for dates I used rotation 45 and bottom 0 20 but you can do some test for your data

User · Answer

I came up with a similar example  Again  the rotation keyword is   well  it s key   from pylab import   fig   figure   ax   fig add subplot 111  ax bar   0 1 2    1 3 5    ax set xticks    0 5  1 5  2 5     ax set xticklabels    tom   dick   harry    rotation 45

User · Answer

Appart from   plt xticks rotation 90    this is also possible   plt xticks rotation  vertical

User · Answer

This works for me   plt xticks rotation 90

User · Answer

Try pyplot setp   I think you could do something like this   x   range len time   plt xticks x   time  locs  labels   plt xticks   plt setp labels  rotation 90  plt plot x  delay

User · Answer

import pylab as pl pl xticks rotation   90

User · Answer

It will depend on what are you plotting   import matplotlib pyplot as plt   x   long text for a label a        long text for a label b        long text for a label c   y  1 2 3  myplot   plt plot x y  for item in myplot axes get xticklabels        item set rotation 90    For pandas and seaborn that give you an Axes object   df   pd DataFrame x y   pandas myplot   df plot bar    seaborn  myplotsns  sns barplot y  0    x df index  data df    you can get xticklabels without  axes cause the object are already a    isntance of it for item in myplot get xticklabels        item set rotation 90    If you need to rotate labels you may need change the font size too  you can use font scale 1 0 to do that

User · Answer

Many  correct  answers here but I ll add one more since I think some details are left out of several   The OP asked for 90 degree rotation but I ll change to 45 degrees because when you use an angle that isn t zero or 90  you should change the horizontal alignment as well  otherwise your labels will be off-center and a bit misleading  and I m guessing many people who come here want to rotate axes to something other than 90    Easiest   Least Code  Option 1  plt xticks rotation 45  ha  right     As mentioned previously  that may not be desirable if you d rather take the Object Oriented approach   Option 2  Another fast way  it s intended for date objects but seems to work on any label  doubt this is recommended though    fig autofmt xdate rotation 45    fig you would usually get from    fig   plt figure   fig  ax   plt subplots   fig   ax figure   Object-Oriented   Dealing directly with ax  Option 3a  If you have the list of labels   labels     One    Two    Three   ax set xticklabels labels  rotation 45  ha  right     Option 3b  If you want to get the list of labels from the current plot     Unfortunately you need to draw your figure first to assign the labels    otherwise get xticklabels   will return empty strings  plt draw   ax set xticklabels ax get xticklabels    rotation 45  ha  right     Option 4  Similar to above  but loop through manually instead   for label in ax get xticklabels      label set rotation 45    label set ha  right     Option 5  We still use pyplot  as plt  here but it s object-oriented because we re changing the property of a specific ax object   plt setp ax get xticklabels    rotation 45  ha  right     Option 6  This option is simple  but AFAIK you can t set label horizontal align this way so another option might be better if your angle is not 90   ax tick params axis  x   labelrotation 45    Edit  There s discussion of this exact  bug  and a fix is potentially slated for v3 2 0  https   github com matplotlib matplotlib issues 13774

User · Answer

Easy way  As described here  there is an existing method in the matplotlib pyplot figure class that automatically rotates dates appropriately for you figure    You can call it after you plot your data  i e ax plot dates ydata     fig autofmt xdate     If you need to format the labels further  checkout the above link   Non-datetime objects  As per languitar s comment  the method I suggested for non-datetime xticks would not update correctly when zooming  etc  If it s not a datetime object used as your x-axis data  you should follow Tommy s answer   for tick in ax get xticklabels        tick set rotation 45

User · Answer

My answer is inspired by cjohnson318 s answer  but I didn t want to supply a hardcoded list of labels  I wanted to rotate the existing labels   for tick in ax get xticklabels        tick set rotation 45

[python] Rotate axis text in python matplotlib

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