How to change legend size with matplotlib pyplot

Question

Simple question here   I m trying to get the size of my legend using matplotlib pyplot to be smaller  i e   the text to be smaller   The code I m using goes something like this   plot figure   plot scatter k  sum cf  color  black   label  Sum of Cause Fractions   plot scatter k  data    0    color  b   label  Dis 1  cf    6  var    2   plot scatter k  data    1    color  r    label  Dis 2  cf    2  var    1   plot scatter k  data    2    color  g   label  Dis 3  cf    1  var    01   plot legend loc 2

User · Answer

On my install  FontProperties only changes the text size  but it s still too large and spaced out   I found a parameter in pyplot rcParams  legend labelspacing  which I m guessing is set to a fraction of the font size   I ve changed it with  pyplot rcParams update   legend labelspacing  0 25     I m not sure how to specify it to the pyplot legend function - passing  prop   labelspacing  0 25    or  prop   legend labelspacing  0 25    comes back with an error

User · Answer

There are multiple settings for adjusting the legend size  The two I find most useful are    labelspacing  which sets the spacing between label entries in multiples of the font size  For instance with a 10 point font  legend      labelspacing 0 2  will reduce the spacing between entries to 2 points  The default on my install is about 0 5  prop  which allows full control of the font size  etc  You can set an 8 point font using legend      prop   size  8    The default on my install is about 14 points    In addition  the legend documentation lists a number of other padding and spacing parameters including  borderpad  handlelength  handletextpad  borderaxespad  and columnspacing  These all follow the same form as labelspacing and area also in multiples of fontsize   These values can also be set as the defaults for all figures using the matplotlibrc file

User · Answer

You can set an individual font size for the legend by adjusting the prop keyword    plot legend loc 2  prop   size   6     This takes a dictionary of keywords corresponding to matplotlib font manager FontProperties properties  See the documentation for legend      Keyword arguments   prop    None   FontProperties   dict       A matplotlib font manager FontProperties instance  If prop is a      dictionary  a new instance will be created with prop  If None  use     rc settings     It is also possible  as of version 1 2 1  to use the keyword fontsize

User · Answer

Now in 2020  with matplotlib 3 2 2 you can set your legend fonts with plt legend title  quot My Title quot   fontsize 10  title fontsize 15   where fontsize is the font size of the items in legend and title fontsize is the font size of the legend title  More information in matplotlib documentation

User · Answer

you can reduce the legend size setting  plt legend labelspacing y  handletextpad x fontsize      labelspacing is the vertical space between each label  handletextpad is the distance between the actual legend and your label  And fontsize is self-explanatory

User · Answer

This should do  import pylab as plot params     legend fontsize   20             legend handlelength   2  plot rcParams update params    Then do the plot afterwards   There are a ton of other rcParams  they can also be set in the matplotlibrc file   Also presumably you can change it passing a matplotlib font manager FontProperties instance but this I don t know how to do   --  see Yann s answer

User · Answer

using import matplotlib pyplot as plt  Method 1  specify the fontsize when calling legend  repetitive   plt legend fontsize 20    using a size in points plt legend fontsize  x-large     using a named size   With this method you can set the fontsize for each legend at creation  allowing you to have multiple legends with different fontsizes   However  you will have to type everything manually each time you create a legend     Note   Mathias711 listed the available named fontsizes in his answer   Method 2  specify the fontsize in rcParams  convenient   plt rc  legend  fontsize 20    using a size in points plt rc  legend  fontsize  medium     using a named size   With this method you set the default legend fontsize  and all legends will automatically use that unless you specify otherwise using method 1  This means you can set your legend fontsize at the beginning of your code  and not worry about setting it for each individual legend    If you use a named size e g   medium   then the legend text will scale with the global font size in rcParams  To change font size use plt rc font size  medium

User · Answer

There are also a few named fontsizes  apart from the size in points   xx-small x-small small medium large x-large xx-large   Usage   pyplot legend loc 2  fontsize    x-small

User · Answer

plot legend loc    lower right   decimal places   2  fontsize    11   title    Hey there   title fontsize    20

[python] How to change legend size with matplotlib.pyplot

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