Matplotlib colorbar ticks on left/opposite side

Question

One could generate a vertical colorbar like so(simplified):

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib as mpl

plt.figure()
c_ax=plt.subplot(111)
cb = mpl.colorbar.ColorbarBase(c_ax,orientation='vertical')
plt.savefig('my_colorbar.png')

Resulting in something like this(rotated for space reasons):

Is it possible to get the ticks labels on the opposite side?

Answer 1

You can switch the position of the ticks using c_ax.yaxis.set_ticks_position()

So for your example:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib as mpl

plt.viridis()

fig=plt.figure()
c_ax=plt.subplot(199)

cb = mpl.colorbar.ColorbarBase(c_ax,orientation='vertical')

c_ax.yaxis.set_ticks_position('left')

plt.savefig('my_colorbar.png')

Note you can also move the colorbar label in a similar way:

c_ax.yaxis.set_label_position('left')

And finally, in case you have a horizontal colorbar, and want to move the ticks and labels to the top, you can use the equivalent function on the xaxis:

c_ax.xaxis.set_label_position('top')
c_ax.xaxis.set_ticks_position('top')