.. note:: :class: sphx-glr-download-link-note Click :ref:`here ` to download the full example code .. rst-class:: sphx-glr-example-title .. _sphx_glr_gallery_ticks_and_spines_centered_ticklabels.py: ============================== Centering labels between ticks ============================== Ticklabels are aligned relative to their associated tick. The alignment 'center', 'left', or 'right' can be controlled using the horizontal alignment property:: for label in ax.xaxis.get_xticklabels(): label.set_horizontalalignment('right') However there is no direct way to center the labels between ticks. To fake this behavior, one can place a label on the minor ticks in between the major ticks, and hide the major tick labels and minor ticks. Here is an example that labels the months, centered between the ticks. .. image:: /gallery/ticks_and_spines/images/sphx_glr_centered_ticklabels_001.png :class: sphx-glr-single-img .. code-block:: default import numpy as np import matplotlib.cbook as cbook import matplotlib.dates as dates import matplotlib.ticker as ticker import matplotlib.pyplot as plt # load some financial data; apple's stock price with cbook.get_sample_data('aapl.npz') as fh: r = np.load(fh)['price_data'].view(np.recarray) r = r[-250:] # get the last 250 days # Matplotlib works better with datetime.datetime than np.datetime64, but the # latter is more portable. date = r.date.astype('O') fig, ax = plt.subplots() ax.plot(date, r.adj_close) ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(dates.MonthLocator()) # 16 is a slight approximation since months differ in number of days. ax.xaxis.set_minor_locator(dates.MonthLocator(bymonthday=16)) ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(ticker.NullFormatter()) ax.xaxis.set_minor_formatter(dates.DateFormatter('%b')) for tick in ax.xaxis.get_minor_ticks(): tick.tick1line.set_markersize(0) tick.tick2line.set_markersize(0) tick.label1.set_horizontalalignment('center') imid = len(r) // 2 ax.set_xlabel(str(date[imid].year)) plt.show() .. _sphx_glr_download_gallery_ticks_and_spines_centered_ticklabels.py: .. only :: html .. container:: sphx-glr-footer :class: sphx-glr-footer-example .. container:: sphx-glr-download :download:`Download Python source code: centered_ticklabels.py ` .. container:: sphx-glr-download :download:`Download Jupyter notebook: centered_ticklabels.ipynb ` .. only:: html .. rst-class:: sphx-glr-signature Keywords: matplotlib code example, codex, python plot, pyplot `Gallery generated by Sphinx-Gallery `_