how to hide plotly yaxis title (in python)?

Question

Editing: The following example from Plotly for reference:

import plotly.express as px

df = px.data.gapminder().query("continent == 'Europe' and year == 2007 and pop > 2.e6")
fig = px.bar(df, y='pop', x='country', text='pop')
fig.update_traces(texttemplate='%{text:.2s}', textposition='outside')
fig.update_layout(uniformtext_minsize=8, uniformtext_mode='hide')
fig.show()

How to remove the word 'pop'.

---

What I want to hide the y-axis title of'value'.

The following syntax doesn't work.

fig.update_yaxes(showticklabels=False)

Thanks.

Answer 1

Solution

You need to use visible=False inside fig.update_yaxes() or fig.update_layout() as follows. For more details see the documentation for plotly.graph_objects.Figure.

# Option-1:  using fig.update_yaxes()
fig.update_yaxes(visible=False, showticklabels=False)

# Option-2: using fig.update_layout()
fig.update_layout(yaxis={'visible': False, 'showticklabels': False})

# Option-3: using fig.update_layout() + dict-flattening shorthand
fig.update_layout(yaxis_visible=False, yaxis_showticklabels=False)

Try doing the following to test this:

# Set the visibility ON
fig.update_yaxes(title='y', visible=True, showticklabels=False)
# Set the visibility OFF
fig.update_yaxes(title='y', visible=False, showticklabels=False)

A. How to create the figure directly with hidden-yaxis label and tickmarks

You can do this directly by using the layout keyword and supplying a dict to go.Figure() constructor.

import plotly.graph_objects as go
fig = go.Figure(
    data=[go.Bar(y=[2, 1, 3])],
    layout_title_text="A Figure Displaying Itself",
    layout = {'xaxis': {'title': 'x-label',
                        'visible': True,
                        'showticklabels': True},
              'yaxis': {'title': 'y-label',
                        'visible': False,
                        'showticklabels': False}
              }
)
fig

B. How to create the figure without the margin space around

Say, you suppressed the titles for both the axes. By default plotly would still leave a default amount of space all around the figure: this is known as the margin in Plotly's documention.

What if you want to reduce or even completely remove the margin?

This can be done using fig.update_layout(margin=dict(l = ..., r = ..., t = ..., b = ...)) as mentioned in the documentation:

• https://plotly.com/python/reference/#layout-margin.

In the following example, I have reduced the left, right and bottom margins to 10 px and set the top margin to 50 px.

import plotly.graph_objects as go

fig = go.Figure(
    data=[go.Bar(y=[2, 1, 3])],
    layout_title_text="A Figure with no axis-title and modified margins",
    layout = {
        'xaxis': {'title': 'x-label',
                'visible': False,
                'showticklabels': True},
        'yaxis': {'title': 'y-label',
                'visible': False,
                'showticklabels': False},
        # specify margins in px
        'margin': dict(
            l = 10,        # left
            r = 10,        # right
            t = 50,        # top
            b = 10,        # bottom
        ),
    },
)
fig

C. An Interesting Feature of Plotly: A hidden shorthand

It turns out that Plotly has a convenient shorthand notation allowing dict-flattening available for input arguments such as this:

## ALL THREE METHODS BELOW ARE EQUIVALENT

# No dict-flattening
# layout = dict with yaxis as key
layout = {'yaxis': {'title': 'y-label',
                    'visible': False,
                    'showticklabels': False}
}

# Partial dict-flattening
# layout_yaxis = dict with key-names
#     title, visible, showticklabels
layout_yaxis = {'title': 'y-label',
                'visible': False,
                'showticklabels': False}

# Complete dict-flattening
# layout_yaxis_key-name for each of the key-names
layout_yaxis_title = 'y-label'
layout_yaxis_visible = False
layout_yaxis_showticklabels = False

Now try running all three of the following and compare the outputs.

import plotly.graph_objects as go

# Method-1: Shortest (less detailed)
fig = go.Figure(
    data=[go.Bar(y=[2, 1, 3])],
    layout_title_text="A Figure Displaying Itself",
    layout_yaxis_visible = False,
    layout_xaxis_title = 'x-label'
)
fig.show()

# Method-2: A hibrid of dicts and underscore-separated-syntax
fig = go.Figure(
    data=[go.Bar(y=[2, 1, 3])],
    layout_title_text="A Figure Displaying Itself",
    layout_xaxis_title = 'x-label',
    layout_yaxis = {'title': 'y-label',
                        'visible': False,
                        'showticklabels': False}
)
fig.show()

# Method-3: A complete dict syntax
fig = go.Figure(
    data=[go.Bar(y=[2, 1, 3])],
    layout_title_text="A Figure Displaying Itself",
    layout = {'xaxis': {'title': 'x-label',
                        'visible': True,
                        'showticklabels': True},
              'yaxis': {'title': 'y-label',
                        'visible': False,
                        'showticklabels': False}
              }
)
fig.show()