Change line width of lines in matplotlib pyplot legend [duplicate]

Question

I would like to change the thickness/width of the line samples featured in the pyplot legend.

Line width of line samples within legend are the same as the lines they represent in the plot (so if line y1 has linewidth=7.0, the legend's corresponding y1 label will also have linewidth=7.0).

I would like the legend lines to be thicker than lines featured in the plot.

For example, the following code generates the following image:

import numpy as np import matplotlib.pyplot as plt  # make some data x = np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi)  y1 = np.sin(x) y2 = np.cos(x)  # plot sin(x) and cos(x) fig = plt.figure() ax  = fig.add_subplot(111) ax.plot(x, y1, c='b', label='y1',linewidth=7.0) ax.plot(x, y2, c='r', label='y2')  leg = plt.legend() plt.show() 

I want to set the y1 label in the legend to have linewidth=7.0, while the y1 line featured in the plot has a different width (linewidth=1.0).

I was unsuccessful in finding a solution online. The only related issues had answers for changing the linewidth of the legend bounding box through leg.get_frame().set_linewidth(7.0). This does not change linewidth of the lines within the legend.

Answer 1

@ImportanceOfBeingErnest 's answer is good if you only want to change the linewidth inside the legend box. But I think it is a bit more complex since you have to copy the handles before changing legend linewidth. Besides, it can not change the legend label fontsize. The following two methods can not only change the linewidth but also the legend label text font size in a more concise way.

Method 1

import numpy as np import matplotlib.pyplot as plt  # make some data x = np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi)  y1 = np.sin(x) y2 = np.cos(x)  # plot sin(x) and cos(x) fig = plt.figure() ax  = fig.add_subplot(111) ax.plot(x, y1, c='b', label='y1') ax.plot(x, y2, c='r', label='y2')  leg = plt.legend() # get the individual lines inside legend and set line width for line in leg.get_lines():     line.set_linewidth(4) # get label texts inside legend and set font size for text in leg.get_texts():     text.set_fontsize('x-large')  plt.savefig('leg_example') plt.show() 

Method 2

import numpy as np import matplotlib.pyplot as plt  # make some data x = np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi)  y1 = np.sin(x) y2 = np.cos(x)  # plot sin(x) and cos(x) fig = plt.figure() ax  = fig.add_subplot(111) ax.plot(x, y1, c='b', label='y1') ax.plot(x, y2, c='r', label='y2')  leg = plt.legend() # get the lines and texts inside legend box leg_lines = leg.get_lines() leg_texts = leg.get_texts() # bulk-set the properties of all lines and texts plt.setp(leg_lines, linewidth=4) plt.setp(leg_texts, fontsize='x-large') plt.savefig('leg_example') plt.show() 

The above two methods produce the same output image: