Consistently center ggplot title across PANEL not PLOT

Question

The default alignment is for a ggplot title to be left-aligned to the plot.background element. Others have noted that you can use plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5) to center the title.

• How to center ggplot plot title
• Center Plot title in ggplot2

However, I want to center the title across the entire panel as oppose to just the plot. I have done this in the past by modifying the hjust to push the title so that it appears centered, but value of hjust is dependent on the length of the title which makes it really tedious to set when I'm batch-producing graphs.

Is it possible to consistently set the title elements of a ggplot to be centered across the panel.background?

library(reprex)
library(tidyverse)
data(mtcars)

mtcars %>% 
  rownames_to_column(var = "model") %>% 
  top_n(8,wt) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x =model, y = wt))+
  geom_col()+
  coord_flip()+
  labs(title="This title is left-aligned to the plot")

mtcars %>% 
  rownames_to_column(var = "model") %>% 
  top_n(8,wt) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x =model, y = wt))+
  geom_col()+
  coord_flip()+
  labs(title="This title is center-aligned to the plot width.")+
  theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5))

mtcars %>% 
  rownames_to_column(var = "model") %>% 
  top_n(8,wt) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x =model, y = wt))+
  geom_col()+
  coord_flip()+
  labs(title="Short title, still works")+
  theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5))

mtcars %>% 
  rownames_to_column(var = "model") %>% 
  top_n(8,wt) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x =model, y = wt))+
  geom_col()+
  coord_flip()+
  labs(title="This title is roughly center-aligned to panel")+ 
  theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.37)) # I know I can adjust this, but it would require a manual fix each time

Suggestion by @user20650

p <- mtcars %>% 
  rownames_to_column(var = "model") %>% 
  top_n(8,wt) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x =model, y = wt))+
  geom_col()+
  coord_flip()+
  #labs(title="Short title, still works")+
  theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5)) 

gridExtra::grid.arrange( top=grid::textGrob("This title is center-aligned to panel"),p  )

^{Created on 2018-09-24 by the reprex package (v0.2.1)}

Answer 1

One approach is to change the position of the title grob so that it starts from the left edge:

p <- mtcars %>% 
  rownames_to_column(var = "model") %>% 
  top_n(8,wt) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x =model, y = wt))+
  geom_col()+
  coord_flip()+
  labs(title="This title is left-aligned to the plot") +
  theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5))

library(gridExtra)
g <- ggplotGrob(p)
g$layout$l[g$layout$name == "title"] <- 1
grid::grid.draw(g)

Answer 2

There is now the option in theme to call plot.title.position to center the plot title to the entire plotting area, not just the plot panel. If you set plot.title.position = "plot" in theme(), it will center the title and subtitle to the whole plotting area, not just above the panel.

library(reprex)
library(tidyverse)
data(mtcars)

mtcars %>% 
  rownames_to_column(var = "model") %>% 
  top_n(8,wt) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x =model, y = wt))+
  geom_col()+
  coord_flip()+
  labs(title="This title is center-aligned to the plot width.")+
  theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5),
        plot.title.position = "plot")