How can I make the legend in ggplot2 the same height as my plot?

Question

I have generated a simple plot in R (version R version 3.0.1 (2013-05-16)) using ggplot2 (version 0.9.3.1) that shows the correlation coefficients for a set of data. Currently, the legend colorbar on the right side of the plot is a fraction of the entire plot size.

I would like the legend colorbar to be same height as the plot. I thought that I could use the legend.key.height to do this, but I have found that is not the case. I investigated the grid package unit function and found that there were some normalized units in there but when I tried them (unit(1, "npc")), the colorbar was way too tall and went off the page.

How can I make the legend the same height as the plot itself?

A full self contained example is below:

# Load the needed libraries
library(ggplot2)
library(grid)
library(scales)
library(reshape2)

# Generate a collection of sample data
variables = c("Var1", "Var2", "Var3")
data = matrix(runif(9, -1, 1), 3, 3)
diag(data) = 1
colnames(data) = variables
rownames(data) = variables

# Generate the plot
corrs = data
ggplot(melt(corrs), aes(x = Var1, y = Var2, fill = value)) +
  geom_tile() +
  geom_text(parse = TRUE, aes(label = sprintf("%.2f", value)), size = 3, color = "white") +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(panel.border = element_blank(),
        axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, vjust = 0.5, hjust = 1),
        aspect.ratio = 1,
        legend.position = "right",
        legend.key.height = unit(1, "inch")) +
        labs(x = "", y = "", fill = "", title = "Correlation Coefficients") +
        scale_fill_gradient2(limits = c(-1, 1), expand = c(0, 0),
                             low = muted("red"),
                             mid = "black",
                             high = muted("blue"))

please post a minimal self-contained reproducible example – baptiste Oct 06 '13 at 23:08 — baptiste, Oct 06 '13 at 23:08
Ok, question edited to have a full runnable example – Justace Clutter Oct 07 '13 at 11:14 — Justace Clutter, Oct 07 '13 at 11:14

Sandy Muspratt · Answer 1 · 2018-08-12T05:51:04.780

Edit Updating to ggplot v3.0.0

This is messy, but based on this answer, and delving deeper into the ggplot grob, the legend can be positioned precisely.

# Load the needed libraries
library(ggplot2)
library(gtable)  # 
library(grid)
library(scales)
library(reshape2)

# Generate a collection of sample data
variables = c("Var1", "Var2", "Var3")
data = matrix(runif(9, -1, 1), 3, 3)
diag(data) = 1
colnames(data) = variables
rownames(data) = variables

# Generate the plot
corrs = data
plot  = ggplot(melt(corrs), aes(x = Var1, y = Var2, fill = value)) + 
   geom_tile() +
   theme_bw() + 
   theme(panel.border = element_blank()) +
   theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, vjust = 0.5, hjust = 1)) +
   theme(aspect.ratio = 1) +
   # theme(legend.position = "right", legend.key.height = unit(1, "inch")) +
   labs(x = "", y = "", fill = "", title = "Correlation Coefficients") +
   scale_fill_gradient2(limits = c(-1, 1), breaks = c(-1, -.5, 0, .5, 1), expand = c(0,0), 
      low = muted("red"), mid = "black", high = muted("blue")) +  # Modified line
   geom_text(parse = TRUE, aes(label = sprintf("%.2f", value)), size = 3, color = "white") +
   scale_x_discrete(expand = c(0,0)) +  # New line
   scale_y_discrete(expand = c(0,0))    # New line
plot

# Get the ggplot grob
gt = ggplotGrob(plot)

# Get the legend
leg = gtable_filter(gt, "guide-box")

# Raster height
leg[[1]][[1]][[1]][[1]][[1]][[2]]$height = unit(1, "npc")

# Positions for labels and tick marks - five breaks, therefore, five positions
pos = unit.c(unit(0.01,"npc"), unit(.25, "npc"), unit(.5, "npc"), unit(.75, "npc"), unit(.99, "npc"))

# Positions the labels 
leg[[1]][[1]][[1]][[1]][[1]][[3]]$children[[1]]$y = pos

# Positions the tick marks
leg[[1]][[1]][[1]][[1]][[1]][[5]]$y0 = pos
leg[[1]][[1]][[1]][[1]][[1]][[5]]$y1 = pos

# Legend key height ?
leg[[1]][[1]][[1]][[1]]$heights = unit.c(rep(unit(0, "mm"), 3),
                                         unit(1, "npc"),
                                         unit(0, "mm"))
# Legend height
leg[[1]][[1]]$heights[[3]] = sum(rep(unit(0, "mm"), 3),
                                 unit(1, "npc"),
                                 unit(0, "mm"))

# grid.draw(leg)  # Check on heights and y values

# gtable_show_layout(gt) # Manually locate position of legend in layout
gt.new = gtable_add_grob(gt, leg, t = 7, l = 9)

# Draw it
grid.newpage()
grid.draw(gt.new)

enter image description here

I'm running into an `invalid 'layout.pos.row'` error when trying to follow this example. Have you seen this before? — philiporlando, Nov 17 '18 at 06:09
@spacedSparking In this context, the error usually occurs when "t" and/or "l" are outside possible values given the gtable. However, the code works for me - I'm using R v3.5.1, ggplot2 v3.1.0, gtable v0.2.0. I'm guessing you're using an older version of ggplot2. — Sandy Muspratt, Nov 17 '18 at 22:39

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 07 '13 at 21:46

7

It seems quite tricky, the closest I got was this,

## panel height is 1null, so we work it out by subtracting the other heights from 1npc
## and 1line for the default plot margins

panel_height = unit(1,"npc") - sum(ggplotGrob(plot)[["heights"]][-3]) - unit(1,"line")
plot + guides(fill= guide_colorbar(barheight=panel_height))

unfortunately the vertical justification is a bit off.

answered Oct 07 '13 at 21:46

baptiste

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Pretty durned close.... Maybe a bit more tweaking but I went ahead and marked it as answered. Thanks for the pointers. – Justace Clutter Oct 08 '13 at 02:45
Any way to prevent this from outputting an empty plot? When I run the panel_height line an empty plot shows up. Not ideal as it results in that empty plot being saved. – Matt Dzievit May 05 '20 at 18:26
2

Hi, is this really still the best we can do? – Paul Schmidt Dec 09 '21 at 13:45

How can I make the legend in ggplot2 the same height as my plot?

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