Matplotlib: how to adjust space between legend markers and labels?

python matplotlib legend
rhtica picture rhtica · Jan 24, 2017 · Viewed 20.3k times · Source

I want to adjust space between legend markers and labels. Sometime the space is too much as default. Does anyone know how to do this?

Thanks.

Answer

tmdavison picture tmdavison · Jan 24, 2017

legend() has a kwarg in called handletextpad which will do what you are looking for. By default, this is set to 0.8. From the docs:

handletextpad : float or None

The pad between the legend handle and text. Measured in font-size units.

Default is None which will take the value from the legend.handletextpad rcParam.

So when you call legend, add that kwarg, and experiment with the value. Something like:

ax.legend(handletextpad=0.1)

Consider the following:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(ncols=2)

ax1.plot(range(5), 'ro', label='handletextpad=0.8')
ax2.plot(range(5), 'bo', label='handletextpad=0.1')

ax1.legend()
ax2.legend(handletextpad=0.1)

plt.show()

enter image description here

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