How to put the legend out of the plot

Question

I have a series of 20 plots  not subplots  to be made in a single figure   I want the legend to be outside of the box   At the same time  I do not want to change the axes  as the size of the figure gets reduced   Kindly help me for the following queries    I want to keep the legend box outside the plot area   I want the legend to be outside at the right side of the plot area   Is there anyway that I reduce the font size of the text inside the legend box  so that the size of the legend box will be small

User · Answer

I simply used the string  center left  for the location  like in matlab  I imported pylab from matplotlib  see the code as follow  from matplotlib as plt from matplotlib font manager import FontProperties t   A   0  sensors   A   index lst       for i in range sensors shape 1        plt plot t sensors   i            plt xlabel  s   plt ylabel    C   lgd   plt legend loc  center left   bbox to anchor  1  0 5  fancybox   True  shadow   True

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Placing the legend  bbox to anchor  A legend is positioned inside the bounding box of the axes using the loc argument to plt legend  E g  loc  quot upper right quot  places the legend in the upper right corner of the bounding box  which by default extents from  0 0  to  1 1  in axes coordinates  or in bounding box notation  x0 y0  width  height   0 0 1 1    To place the legend outside of the axes bounding box  one may specify a tuple  x0 y0  of axes coordinates of the lower left corner of the legend  plt legend loc  1 04 0    A more versatile approach is to manually specify the bounding box into which the legend should be placed  using the bbox to anchor argument  One can restrict oneself to supply only the  x0  y0  part of the bbox  This creates a zero span box  out of which the legend will expand in the direction given by the loc argument  E g  plt legend bbox to anchor  1 04 1   loc  quot upper left quot   places the legend outside the axes  such that the upper left corner of the legend is at position  1 04 1  in axes coordinates  Further examples are given below  where additionally the interplay between different arguments like mode and ncols are shown   l1   plt legend bbox to anchor  1 04 1   borderaxespad 0  l2   plt legend bbox to anchor  1 04 0   loc  quot lower left quot   borderaxespad 0  l3   plt legend bbox to anchor  1 04 0 5   loc  quot center left quot   borderaxespad 0  l4   plt legend bbox to anchor  0 1 02 1 0 2   loc  quot lower left quot                   mode  quot expand quot   borderaxespad 0  ncol 3  l5   plt legend bbox to anchor  1 0   loc  quot lower right quot                    bbox transform fig transFigure  ncol 3  l6   plt legend bbox to anchor  0 4 0 8   loc  quot upper right quot    Details about how to interpret the 4-tuple argument to bbox to anchor  as in l4  can be found in this question  The mode  quot expand quot  expands the legend horizontally inside the bounding box given by the 4-tuple  For a vertically expanded legend  see this question  Sometimes it may be useful to specify the bounding box in figure coordinates instead of axes coordinates  This is shown in the example l5 from above  where the bbox transform argument is used to put the legend in the lower left corner of the figure  Postprocessing Having placed the legend outside the axes often leads to the undesired situation that it is completely or partially outside the figure canvas  Solutions to this problem are   Adjust the subplot parameters One can adjust the subplot parameters such  that the axes take less space inside the figure  and thereby leave more space to the legend  by using plt subplots adjust  E g    plt subplots adjust right 0 7     leaves 30  space on the right-hand side of the figure  where one could place the legend   Tight layout Using plt tight layout Allows to automatically adjust the subplot parameters such that the elements in the figure sit tight against the figure edges  Unfortunately  the legend is not taken into account in this automatism  but we can supply a rectangle box that the whole subplots area  including labels  will fit into    plt tight layout rect  0 0 0 75 1     Saving the figure with bbox inches    quot tight quot  The argument bbox inches    quot tight quot  to plt savefig can be used to save the figure such that all artist on the canvas  including the legend  are fit into the saved area  If needed  the figure size is automatically adjusted    plt savefig  quot output png quot   bbox inches  quot tight quot     automatically adjusting the subplot params A way to automatically adjust the subplot position such that the legend fits inside the canvas without changing the figure size can be found in this answer  Creating figure with exact size and no padding  and legend outside the axes    Comparison between the cases discussed above   Alternatives A figure legend One may use a legend to the figure instead of the axes  matplotlib figure Figure legend  This has become especially useful for matplotlib version  gt  2 1  where no special arguments are needed fig legend loc 7    to create a legend for all artists in the different axes of the figure  The legend is placed using the loc argument  similar to how it is placed inside an axes  but in reference to the whole figure - hence it will be outside the axes somewhat automatically  What remains is to adjust the subplots such that there is no overlap between the legend and the axes  Here the point  quot Adjust the subplot parameters quot   from above will be helpful  An example  import numpy as np import matplotlib pyplot as plt  x   np linspace 0 2 np pi  colors   quot  7aa0c4 quot   quot  ca82e1 quot    quot  8bcd50 quot   quot  e18882 quot   fig  axes   plt subplots ncols 2  for i in range 4       axes i  2  plot x np sin x i   color colors i  label  quot y sin x     quot  format i    fig legend loc 7  fig tight layout   fig subplots adjust right 0 75     plt show     Legend inside dedicated subplot axes An alternative to using bbox to anchor would be to place the legend in its dedicated subplot axes  lax   Since the legend subplot should be smaller than the plot  we may use gridspec kw   quot width ratios quot   4 1   at axes creation  We can hide the axes lax axis  quot off quot   but still put a legend in  The legend handles and labels need to obtained from the real plot via h l   ax get legend handles labels    and can then be supplied to the legend in the lax subplot  lax legend h l   A complete example is below  import matplotlib pyplot as plt plt rcParams  quot figure figsize quot     6 2  fig   ax lax    plt subplots ncols 2  gridspec kw   quot width ratios quot   4 1    ax plot x y  label  quot y sin x  quot         h l   ax get legend handles labels   lax legend h l  borderaxespad 0  lax axis  quot off quot    plt tight layout   plt show    This produces a plot  which is visually pretty similar to the plot from above   We could also use the first axes to place the legend  but use the bbox transform of the legend axes  ax legend bbox to anchor  0 0 1 1   bbox transform lax transAxes  lax axis  quot off quot    In this approach  we do not need to obtain the legend handles externally  but we need to specify the bbox to anchor argument  Further reading and notes   Consider the matplotlib legend guide with some examples of other stuff you want to do with legends  Some example code for placing legends for pie charts may directly be found in answer to this question  Python - Legend overlaps with the pie chart The loc argument can take numbers instead of strings  which make calls shorter  however  they are not very intuitively mapped to each other  Here is the mapping for reference

User · Answer

There are a number of ways to do what you want   To add to what  inalis and  Navi already said  you can use the bbox to anchor keyword argument to place the legend partially outside the axes and or decrease the font size  Before you consider decreasing the font size  which can make things awfully hard to read   try playing around with placing the legend in different places  So  let s start with a generic example  import matplotlib pyplot as plt import numpy as np  x   np arange 10   fig   plt figure   ax   plt subplot 111   for i in xrange 5       ax plot x  i   x  label   y    ix     i   ax legend    plt show     If we do the same thing  but use the bbox to anchor keyword argument we can shift the legend slightly outside the axes boundaries  import matplotlib pyplot as plt import numpy as np  x   np arange 10   fig   plt figure   ax   plt subplot 111   for i in xrange 5       ax plot x  i   x  label   y    ix     i    ax legend bbox to anchor  1 1  1 05    plt show     Similarly  make the legend more horizontal and or put it at the top of the figure  I m also turning on rounded corners and a simple drop shadow   import matplotlib pyplot as plt import numpy as np  x   np arange 10   fig   plt figure   ax   plt subplot 111   for i in xrange 5       line    ax plot x  i   x  label   y    ix   i   ax legend loc  upper center   bbox to anchor  0 5  1 05             ncol 3  fancybox True  shadow True  plt show     Alternatively  shrink the current plot s width  and put the legend entirely outside the axis of the figure  note  if you use tight layout    then leave out ax set position    import matplotlib pyplot as plt import numpy as np  x   np arange 10   fig   plt figure   ax   plt subplot 111   for i in xrange 5       ax plot x  i   x  label   y    ix   i     Shrink current axis by 20  box   ax get position   ax set position  box x0  box y0  box width   0 8  box height      Put a legend to the right of the current axis ax legend loc  center left   bbox to anchor  1  0 5    plt show     And in a similar manner  shrink the plot vertically  and put a horizontal legend at the bottom  import matplotlib pyplot as plt import numpy as np  x   np arange 10   fig   plt figure   ax   plt subplot 111   for i in xrange 5       line    ax plot x  i   x  label   y    ix   i     Shrink current axis s height by 10  on the bottom box   ax get position   ax set position  box x0  box y0   box height   0 1                   box width  box height   0 9      Put a legend below current axis ax legend loc  upper center   bbox to anchor  0 5  -0 05             fancybox True  shadow True  ncol 5   plt show     Have a look at the matplotlib legend guide  You might also take a look at plt figlegend

User · Answer

It s worth refreshing this question  as newer versions of Matplotlib have made it much easier to position the legend outside the plot  I produced this example with Matplotlib version 3 1 1   Users can pass a 2-tuple of coordinates to the loc parameter to position the legend anywhere in the bounding box  The only gotcha is you need to run plt tight layout   to get matplotlib to recompute the plot dimensions so the legend is visible   import matplotlib pyplot as plt  plt plot  0  1    0  1   label  Label 1   plt plot  0  1    0  2   label  Label 2    plt legend loc  1 05  0 5   plt tight layout     This leads to the following plot     References    https   matplotlib org api  as gen matplotlib pyplot legend html https   showmecode info matplotlib legend reposition-legend   personal site

User · Answer

In addition to all the excellent answers here  newer versions of matplotlib and pylab can automatically determine where to put the legend without interfering with the plots  if possible   pylab legend loc  best     This will automatically place the legend away from the data if possible    However  if there is no place to put the legend without overlapping the data  then you ll want to try one of the other answers  using loc  best  will never put the legend outside of the plot

User · Answer

You can make the legend text smaller by specifying set size of FontProperties  Resources   Legend guide matplotlib legend matplotlib pyplot legend matplotlib font manager  set size self  size  Valid font size are xx-small  x-small  small  medium  large  x-large  xx-large  larger  smaller  None   Real Python  Python Plotting With Matplotlib  Guide     import matplotlib pyplot as plt from matplotlib font manager import FontProperties  fontP   FontProperties   fontP set size  xx-small    p1    plt plot  1  2  3   label  Line 1   p2    plt plot  3  2  1   label  Line 2   plt legend handles  p1  p2   title  title   bbox to anchor  1 05  1   loc  upper left   prop fontP     As noted by Mateen Ulhaq  fontsize  xx-small  also works  without importing FontProperties   plt legend handles  p1  p2   title  title   bbox to anchor  1 05  1   loc  upper left   fontsize  xx-small

User · Answer

As noted  you could also place the legend in the plot  or slightly off it to the edge as well  Here is an example using the Plotly Python API  made with an IPython Notebook  I m on the team    To begin  you ll want to install the necessary packages   import plotly import math import random import numpy as np   Then  install Plotly   un  IPython Demo  k  1fw3zw2o13  py   plotly plotly username un  key k    def sin x n   sine   0 for i in range n       sign    -1   i     sine   sine     x   2 0 i 1   math factorial 2 i 1   sign return sine  x   np arange -12 12 0 1   anno      text       sum  k 0     infty    frac   -1  k x  1 2k    1   2k        x   0 3   y   0 6  xref    paper    yref    paper   showarrow   False   font    size  24     l      annotations    anno     title    Taylor series of sine    xaxis    ticks      linecolor   white   showgrid  False  zeroline  False    yaxis    ticks      linecolor   white   showgrid  False  zeroline  False    legend    font    size  16   bordercolor   white   bgcolor    fcfcfc      py iplot    x  x   y  sin x 1    line    color    e377c2     name    x                  x  x   y  sin x 2    line    color    7f7f7f    name     x-  frac x 3  6               x  x   y  sin x 3    line    color    bcbd22    name     x-  frac x 3  6    frac x 5  120               x  x   y  sin x 4    line    color    17becf    name     x-  frac x 5  120       layout l    This creates your graph  and allows you a chance to keep the legend within the plot itself  The default for the legend if it is not set is to place it in the plot  as shown here       For an alternative placement  you can closely align the edge of the graph and border of the legend  and remove border lines for a closer fit      You can move and re-style the legend and graph with code  or with the GUI  To shift the legend  you have the following options to position the legend inside the graph by assigning x and y values of  lt   1  E g        x    0  y    0  -- Bottom Left    x    1   y    0  -- Bottom Right    x    1   y    1  -- Top Right    x    0   y    1  -- Top Left    x    5   y    0  -- Bottom Center    x    5   y    1  -- Top Center   In this case  we choose the upper right  legendstyle     x    1   y    1   also described in the documentation

User · Answer

Here is an example from the matplotlib tutorial found here  This is one of the more simpler examples but I added transparency to the legend and added plt show   so you can paste this into the interactive shell and get a result   import matplotlib pyplot as plt p1    plt plot  1  2  3   p2    plt plot  3  2  1   p3    plt plot  2  3  1   plt legend  p2  p1  p3     line 1    line 2    line 3    get frame   set alpha 0 5  plt show

User · Answer

Not exactly what you asked for  but I found it s an alternative for the same problem  Make the legend semi-transparant  like so    Do this with   fig   pylab figure   ax   fig add subplot 111  ax plot x y label label color color    Make the legend transparent  ax legend loc 2 fontsize 10 fancybox True  get frame   set alpha 0 5    Make a transparent text box ax text 0 02 0 02 yourstring  verticalalignment  bottom                        horizontalalignment  left                        fontsize 10                       bbox   facecolor   white    alpha  0 6   pad  10                        transform self ax transAxes

User · Answer

Short answer  you can use bbox to anchor   bbox extra artists   bbox inches  tight      Longer answer  You can use bbox to anchor to manually specify the location of the legend box  as some other people have pointed out in the answers    However  the usual issue is that the legend box is cropped  e g    import matplotlib pyplot as plt    data  all x    10 20 30  all y     1 3    1 5 2 9   3 2      Plot fig   plt figure 1  ax   fig add subplot 111  ax plot all x  all y     Add legend  title and axis labels lgd   ax legend     Lag     str lag  for lag in all x   loc  center right   bbox to anchor  1 3  0 5   ax set title  Title   ax set xlabel  x label   ax set ylabel  y label    fig savefig  image output png   dpi 300  format  png       In order to prevent the legend box from getting cropped  when you save the figure you can use the parameters bbox extra artists and bbox inches to ask savefig to include cropped elements in the saved image   fig savefig  image output png   bbox extra artists  lgd    bbox inches  tight    Example  I only changed the last line to add 2 parameters to fig savefig      import matplotlib pyplot as plt    data  all x    10 20 30  all y     1 3    1 5 2 9   3 2      Plot fig   plt figure 1  ax   fig add subplot 111  ax plot all x  all y     Add legend  title and axis labels lgd   ax legend     Lag     str lag  for lag in all x   loc  center right   bbox to anchor  1 3  0 5   ax set title  Title   ax set xlabel  x label   ax set ylabel  y label        fig savefig  image output png   dpi 300  format  png   bbox extra artists  lgd    bbox inches  tight       I wish that matplotlib would natively allow outside location for the legend box as Matlab does   figure x   0  2 12  plot x besselj 1 x  x besselj 2 x  x besselj 3 x    hleg   legend  First   Second   Third                     Location   NorthEastOutside     Make the text of the legend italic and color it brown set hleg  FontAngle   italic   TextColor    3  2  1

User · Answer

Something along these lines worked for me  Starting with a bit of code taken from Joe  this method modifies the window width to automatically fit a legend to the right of the figure   import matplotlib pyplot as plt import numpy as np  plt ion    x   np arange 10   fig   plt figure   ax   plt subplot 111   for i in xrange 5       ax plot x  i   x  label   y    ix   i     Put a legend to the right of the current axis leg   ax legend loc  center left   bbox to anchor  1  0 5    plt draw      Get the ax dimensions  box   ax get position   xlocs    box x0 box x1  ylocs    box y0 box y1     Get the figure size in inches and the dpi  w  h   fig get size inches   dpi   fig get dpi      Get the legend size  calculate new window width and change the figure size  legWidth   leg get window extent   width winWidthNew   w dpi legWidth fig set size inches winWidthNew dpi h     Adjust the window size to fit the figure  mgr   plt get current fig manager   mgr window wm geometry   ix i   winWidthNew mgr window winfo height        Rescale the ax to keep its original size  factor   w dpi winWidthNew x0   xlocs 0  factor x1   xlocs 1  factor width   box width factor ax set position  x0 ylocs 0  x1-x0 ylocs 1 -ylocs 0     plt draw

User · Answer

The solution that worked for me when I had huge legend was to use extra empty image layout   In following example I made 4 rows and at the bottom I plot image with offset for legend  bbox to anchor  at the top it does not get cut   f   plt figure   ax   f add subplot 414  lgd   ax legend loc  upper left   bbox to anchor  0  4   mode  expand   borderaxespad 0 3  ax autoscale view   plt savefig fig name  format  svg   dpi 1200  bbox extra artists  lgd    bbox inches  tight

User · Answer

You can also try figlegend   It is possible to create a legend independent of any Axes object   However  you may need to create some  dummy  Paths to make sure the formatting for the objects gets passed on correctly

User · Answer

Just call legend   call after the plot   call like this     matplotlib plt plot      plt legend loc  center left   bbox to anchor  1  0 5      Pandas df myCol plot   legend loc  center left   bbox to anchor  1  0 5     Results would look something like this

User · Answer

To place the legend outside the plot area  use loc and bbox to anchor keywords of legend    For example  the following code will place the legend to the right of the plot area   legend loc  upper left   bbox to anchor  1 1     For more info  see the legend guide

User · Answer

Short Answer  Invoke draggable on the legend and interactively move it wherever you want   ax legend   draggable     Long Answer  If you rather prefer to place the legend interactively manually rather than programmatically  you can toggle the draggable mode of the legend so that you can drag it to wherever you want  Check the example below   import matplotlib pylab as plt import numpy as np  define the figure and get an axes instance fig   plt figure   ax   fig add subplot 111   plot the data x   np arange -5  6  ax plot x  x x  label  y   x 2   ax plot x  x x x  label  y   x 3   ax legend   draggable   plt show

User · Answer

Here s another solution  similar to adding bbox extra artists and bbox inches  where you don t have to have your extra artists in the scope of your savefig call  I came up with this since I generate most of my plot inside functions   Instead of adding all your additions to the bounding box when you want to write it out  you can add them ahead of time to the Figure s artists  Using something similar to Franck Dernoncourt s answer above   import matplotlib pyplot as plt    data  all x    10 20 30  all y     1 3    1 5 2 9   3 2      plotting function def gen plot x  y       fig   plt figure 1      ax   fig add subplot 111      ax plot all x  all y      lgd   ax legend     Lag     str lag  for lag in all x   loc  center right   bbox to anchor  1 3  0 5       fig artists append lgd    Here s the change     ax set title  Title       ax set xlabel  x label       ax set ylabel  y label       return fig    plotting fig   gen plot all x  all y     No need for  bbox extra artists  fig savefig  image output png   dpi 300  format  png   bbox inches  tight     Here s the generated plot

[python] How to put the legend out of the plot

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