Removing frame while keeping axes in pyplot subplots

Question

I am creating a figure with 3 subplots, and was wondering if there is any way of removing the frame around them, while keeping the axes in place?

score 39 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 21 '21 at 15:30

39

Try plt.box(on=None) It removed only the bounding box (frame) around plot, which is what I was trying to do.

plt.axis('off') removed tick labels and the bounding box, which wasn't what I was looking to accomplish.

edited Jan 21 '21 at 15:30

Georgy

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answered May 27 '17 at 11:20

Ben Miller

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score 38 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 25 '14 at 16:28

38

If you want to remove the axis spines, but not the other information (ticks, labels, etc.), you can do that like so:

fig, ax = plt.subplots(7,1, sharex=True)

t = np.arange(0, 1, 0.01)

for i, a in enumerate(ax):
    a.plot(t, np.sin((i + 1) * 2 * np.pi * t))
    a.spines["top"].set_visible(False)
    a.spines["right"].set_visible(False)
    a.spines["bottom"].set_visible(False)

or, more easily, using seaborn:

fig, ax = plt.subplots(7,1, sharex=True)

t = np.arange(0, 1, 0.01)

for i, a in enumerate(ax):
    a.plot(t, np.sin((i + 1) * 2 * np.pi * t))

seaborn.despine(left=True, bottom=True, right=True)

Both approaches will give you:

enter image description here

answered Feb 25 '14 at 16:28

mwaskom

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If you happen to have polar plots, spines are defined differently, so per http://stackoverflow.com/a/22848030/1034716 you need to do: a.spines['polar'].set_visible(False) – hodgkin-huxley Jul 16 '15 at 15:30
In Python 3, the for loop is even simpler: ```for a in ax:``` – Douglas Adams May 19 '19 at 22:53
@mwaskom How would I keep the x-axis at the last subplot in the above code? – alexv Oct 31 '20 at 00:19

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 25 '14 at 16:12

You can achieve something like this with the axis('off') method of an axis handle. Is this the kind of thing you are after? (example code below the figure).

subplots without axes shown

fig, ax = plt.subplots(7,1)

t = np.arange(0, 1, 0.01)

for i, a in enumerate(ax):
    a.plot(t, np.sin((i+1)*2*np.pi*t))
    a.axis('off')

plt.show()

Removing frame while keeping axes in pyplot subplots

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