How to change defaults in matplot lib and find specific list of rc parameters

Question

I am learning matplotlib at the moment and working on changing the rcParams. The documentation on the website appears to be very sparse.

When I look here, there is only a select few examples of rc parameters that can be changed, mainly fonts or line colors, such as:

rcParams['lines.linewidth'] = 2
rcParams['lines.color'] = 'r'

And so forth. I am looking for ways to alter the grid and default figure size for example, but they are not listed here and are only scattered here and there across the web. I want to find a reference list of all the changeable parameters and their descriptions. Does such a reference exist?

Thanks.

Answer 1

There is a complete tutorial about rc params: Customizing Matplotlib with style sheets and rcParams.

Further down that tutorial there is a section A sample matplotlibrc file, which contains all valid rc params.

Another option is to just print all rc params out,

print(plt.rcParams)

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Concerning the actual question:

• The grid can be turned on via

  plt.rcParams["axes.grid"] = True
  

• The figure size can be set via

  plt.rcParams["figure.figsize"] = (8,6)
  

Answer 2

From the documentation, you can find the location of the matplotlibrc on your machine as follows:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.matplotlib_fname()

In your text editor, you can uncomment the preset commands. This file is read whenever matplotlib is imported.