Cowplot made ggplot2 theme disappear / How to see current ggplot2 theme, and restore the default?

Question

I recently installed the cowplot package. However, after doing this I noticed that my ggplots are missing their background and grid lines of theme_grey()<

Answer 1

Note: this is longer an issue in current releases of cowplot, where the default theme is not changed. Original answer below:

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You can use theme_get() to see the current "default" theme.

You can use theme_set() to change the "default" theme.

Theme settings do not carry over sessions.

Usually, your default will be theme_grey, but cowplot feels it's necessary to change that into theme_cowplot. I really wish it didn't.

You can either use :: notation to completely avoid this, or you can load the package as:

library(cowplot)
theme_set(theme_grey())