You are reading an old version of the documentation (v3.0.0). For the latest version see https://matplotlib.org/stable/gallery/subplots_axes_and_figures/demo_tight_layout.html
Version 3.0.0
matplotlib
Fork me on GitHub

Table Of Contents

Related Topics

Resizing axes with tight layout

tight_layout attempts to resize subplots in a figure so that there are no overlaps between axes objects and labels on the axes.

See Tight Layout guide for more details and Constrained Layout Guide for an alternative.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import itertools
import warnings


fontsizes = itertools.cycle([8, 16, 24, 32])


def example_plot(ax):
    ax.plot([1, 2])
    ax.set_xlabel('x-label', fontsize=next(fontsizes))
    ax.set_ylabel('y-label', fontsize=next(fontsizes))
    ax.set_title('Title', fontsize=next(fontsizes))
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
example_plot(ax)
plt.tight_layout()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_001.png
fig, ((ax1, ax2), (ax3, ax4)) = plt.subplots(nrows=2, ncols=2)
example_plot(ax1)
example_plot(ax2)
example_plot(ax3)
example_plot(ax4)
plt.tight_layout()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_002.png
fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(nrows=2, ncols=1)
example_plot(ax1)
example_plot(ax2)
plt.tight_layout()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_003.png
fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(nrows=1, ncols=2)
example_plot(ax1)
example_plot(ax2)
plt.tight_layout()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_004.png
fig, axes = plt.subplots(nrows=3, ncols=3)
for row in axes:
    for ax in row:
        example_plot(ax)
plt.tight_layout()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_005.png
fig = plt.figure()

ax1 = plt.subplot(221)
ax2 = plt.subplot(223)
ax3 = plt.subplot(122)

example_plot(ax1)
example_plot(ax2)
example_plot(ax3)

plt.tight_layout()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_006.png
fig = plt.figure()

ax1 = plt.subplot2grid((3, 3), (0, 0))
ax2 = plt.subplot2grid((3, 3), (0, 1), colspan=2)
ax3 = plt.subplot2grid((3, 3), (1, 0), colspan=2, rowspan=2)
ax4 = plt.subplot2grid((3, 3), (1, 2), rowspan=2)

example_plot(ax1)
example_plot(ax2)
example_plot(ax3)
example_plot(ax4)

plt.tight_layout()

plt.show()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_007.png
fig = plt.figure()

import matplotlib.gridspec as gridspec

gs1 = gridspec.GridSpec(3, 1)
ax1 = fig.add_subplot(gs1[0])
ax2 = fig.add_subplot(gs1[1])
ax3 = fig.add_subplot(gs1[2])

example_plot(ax1)
example_plot(ax2)
example_plot(ax3)

with warnings.catch_warnings():
    warnings.simplefilter("ignore", UserWarning)
    # This raises warnings since tight layout cannot
    # handle gridspec automatically. We are going to
    # do that manually so we can filter the warning.
    gs1.tight_layout(fig, rect=[None, None, 0.45, None])

gs2 = gridspec.GridSpec(2, 1)
ax4 = fig.add_subplot(gs2[0])
ax5 = fig.add_subplot(gs2[1])

example_plot(ax4)
example_plot(ax5)

with warnings.catch_warnings():
    # This raises warnings since tight layout cannot
    # handle gridspec automatically. We are going to
    # do that manually so we can filter the warning.
    warnings.simplefilter("ignore", UserWarning)
    gs2.tight_layout(fig, rect=[0.45, None, None, None])

# now match the top and bottom of two gridspecs.
top = min(gs1.top, gs2.top)
bottom = max(gs1.bottom, gs2.bottom)

gs1.update(top=top, bottom=bottom)
gs2.update(top=top, bottom=bottom)

plt.show()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_008.png