Concise way to set axis label font size in matplotlib

Question

I am looking for the most concise way to set axis labels and their font size.

I am aware I can do this:

ax.set_xlabel('X axis', fontsize = 12)
ax.set_ylabel('Y axis', fontsize = 12)

I also know I can use this command to set the labels instead:

ax.set(xlabel = 'X axis', ylabel = 'Yaxis')

However, if I try:

ax.set(xlabel = 'X axis', ylabel = 'Yaxis', fontsize = 12)

I get this error:

TypeError: There is no AxesSubplot property "fontsize"

Can I denote the fontsize within the set method? I’d like to tidy up my code a bit and be as concise as possible.

Asked By: June Skeeter

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Source

Answer 1

You could change the label for each “axis” instance of the “axes”. The text instance returned by “get_label” provides methods to modify the fonts size, but also other properties of the label:

from matplotlib import pylab as plt
import numpy

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.grid()

# set labels and font size
ax.set_xlabel('X axis', fontsize = 12)
ax.set_ylabel('Y axis', fontsize = 12)

ax.plot(numpy.random.random(100))

# change font size for x axis
ax.xaxis.get_label().set_fontsize(20)

plt.show()

Answered By: Niemerds

Answer 2

ax.xaxis.label or ax.yaxis.label also return a matplotlib.text.Text object, so you can call set() or set_size() on it to change the fontsize (you can also change the position with the former).

ax.xaxis.label.set_size(20)

A working example:

fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(5,3))
ax.plot(range(10), range(10))
ax.set(xlabel='Time', ylabel='Value')
ax.xaxis.label.set(fontsize=20, position=(0.9, 0))
ax.yaxis.label.set(fontsize=15, position=(0, 0.9))

Answered By: cottontail

Concise way to set axis label font size in matplotlib

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