Remove facet_wrap labels completely

Question

I'd like to remove the labels for the facets completely to create a sort of sparkline effect, as for the audience the labels are irrelevant, the best I can come up with is:

library(MASS) library(ggplot2) qplot(week,y,data=bacteria,group=ID, geom=c('point','line'), xlab='', ylab='') +       facet_wrap(~ID) +       theme(strip.text.x = element_text(size=0)) 

So can I get rid of the (now blank) strip.background completely to allow more space for the "sparklines"?

Or alternatively is there a better way to get this "sparkline" effect for a large number of binary valued time-series like this?

Answer 1

For ggplot v2.1.0 or higher, use element_blank() to remove unwanted elements:

library(MASS) # To get the data library(ggplot2)  qplot(   week,   y,   data = bacteria,   group = ID,   geom = c('point', 'line'),   xlab = '',   ylab = '' ) +  facet_wrap(~ ID) +  theme(   strip.background = element_blank(),   strip.text.x = element_blank() ) 

In this case, the element you're trying to remove is called strip.

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Alternative using ggplot grob layout

In older versions of ggplot (before v2.1.0), the strip text occupies rows in the gtable layout.

element_blank removes the text and the background, but it does not remove the space that the row occupied.

This code removes those rows from the layout:

library(ggplot2) library(grid)  p <- qplot(   week,   y,   data = bacteria,   group = ID,   geom = c('point', 'line'),   xlab = '',   ylab = '' ) +  facet_wrap(~ ID)  # Get the ggplot grob gt <- ggplotGrob(p)  # Locate the tops of the plot panels panels <- grep("panel", gt$layout$name) top <- unique(gt$layout$t[panels])  # Remove the rows immediately above the plot panel gt = gt[-(top-1), ]  # Draw it grid.newpage() grid.draw(gt)