How to remove top and right axis in matplotlib?

Question

Instead of the standard boxed style, I want to have only the left and bottom axes, that is:

+------+ | | | | | | ---> | | | | +------+ +------- 

This should be easy, but I can’t find the necessary options in the docs.

Answer 1

This is the proposed Matplotlib 3 solution from the official website HERE :

 import numpy as np import matplotlib.pyplot as plt x = np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi, 100) y = np.sin(x) ax = plt.subplot(111) ax.plot(x, y) # Hide the right and top spines ax.spines['right'].set_visible(False) ax.spines['top'].set_visible(False) # Only show ticks on the left and bottom spines ax.yaxis.set_ticks_position('left') ax.xaxis.set_ticks_position('bottom') plt.show() 

Answer 2

Alternatively, this

 def simpleaxis(ax): ax.spines['top'].set_visible(False) ax.spines['right'].set_visible(False) ax.get_xaxis().tick_bottom() ax.get_yaxis().tick_left() 

seems to have the same effect on the axis without losing support with label support.

(Matplotlib 1.0.1; solution inspired by this ).

Answer 3

[edit] matplotlib is currently (2013-10) in version 1.3.0, which includes this

This ability was just added, and for it you need a version of Subversion. You can see the sample code here .

I'm just updating to say that an example is better now. However, a version of Subversion is needed, but there have not yet been releases.

[edit] Matplotlib 0.99.0 RC1 has just been released and includes this feature.

Answer 4

If you do not need ticks, etc. (for example, to build quality illustrations), you can also use this quick workaround:

Make the axis invisible (for example, using plt.gca().axison = False ), and then draw them manually using plt.arrow .

Answer 5

_{(This is more of an additional comment, in addition to the comprehensive answers here.)}

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Please note that we can hide each of these three elements independently of each other:

• To hide the border (aka “spine”): ax.set_frame_on(False) or ax.spines['top'].set_visible(False)

• To hide the checkmarks: ax.tick_params(top=False)

• To hide tags: ax.tick_params(labeltop=False)

Answer 6

The Seaborn library has a built-in despine () function.

Just add:

 import seaborn as sns 

Now create your schedule. And add at the end:

 sns.despine() 

If you look at some of the default values ​​of the function, it will remove the upper and right spine and save the lower and left parts of the spine:

 sns.despine(top=True, right=True, left=False, bottom=False) 

Check out the additional documentation here: https://seaborn.pydata.org/generated/seaborn.despine.html

Answer 7

If you need to remove it from all your graphs, you can remove the spikes in the style settings (stylesheet or rcParams). For example:

 import matplotlib as mpl mpl.rcParams['axes.spines.right'] = False mpl.rcParams['axes.spines.top'] = False 

If you want to remove all spikes:

 mpl.rcParams['axes.spines.left'] = False mpl.rcParams['axes.spines.right'] = False mpl.rcParams['axes.spines.top'] = False mpl.rcParams['axes.spines.bottom'] = False 

Answer 8

This is much more rudimentary, but can do the trick:

remove_border ()