Add a common Legend for combined ggplots

Question

I have two ggplots which I align horizontally with grid.arrange. I have looked through a lot of forum posts, but everything I try seem to be commands that are now updated and named something else.

My data looks like this;

# Data plot 1                                   
        axis1     axis2   
group1 -0.212201  0.358867
group2 -0.279756 -0.126194
group3  0.186860 -0.203273
group4  0.417117 -0.002592
group1 -0.212201  0.358867
group2 -0.279756 -0.126194
group3  0.186860 -0.203273
group4  0.186860 -0.203273

# Data plot 2   
        axis1     axis2
group1  0.211826 -0.306214
group2 -0.072626  0.104988
group3 -0.072626  0.104988
group4 -0.072626  0.104988
group1  0.211826 -0.306214
group2 -0.072626  0.104988
group3 -0.072626  0.104988
group4 -0.072626  0.104988

#And I run this:
library(ggplot2)
library(gridExtra)


groups=c('group1','group2','group3','group4','group1','group2','group3','group4')

x1=data1[,1]
y1=data1[,2]

x2=data2[,1]
y2=data2[,2]

p1=ggplot(data1, aes(x=x1, y=y1,colour=groups)) + geom_point(position=position_jitter(w=0.04,h=0.02),size=1.8)

p2=ggplot(data2, aes(x=x2, y=y2,colour=groups)) + geom_point(position=position_jitter(w=0.04,h=0.02),size=1.8)

#Combine plots
p3=grid.arrange(
p1 + theme(legend.position="none"), p2+ theme(legend.position="none"), nrow=1, widths = unit(c(10.,10), "cm"), heights = unit(rep(8, 1), "cm")))

How would I extract the legend from any of these plots and add it to the bottom/centre of the combined plot?

Answer 1

You may also use ggarrange from ggpubr package and set "common.legend = TRUE":

library(ggpubr)

dsamp <- diamonds[sample(nrow(diamonds), 1000), ]
p1 <- qplot(carat, price, data = dsamp, colour = clarity)
p2 <- qplot(cut, price, data = dsamp, colour = clarity)
p3 <- qplot(color, price, data = dsamp, colour = clarity)
p4 <- qplot(depth, price, data = dsamp, colour = clarity) 

ggarrange(p1, p2, p3, p4, ncol=2, nrow=2, common.legend = TRUE, legend="bottom")