Rotate tick labels for seaborn barplot

Question

I am trying to display a chart with rotated x-axis labels, but the chart is not displaying.

import seaborn as sns
%matplotlib inline

yellow='#FFB11E'
by_school=sns.barplot(x ='Organization Name',y ='Score',data = combined.sort('Organization Name'),color=yellow,ci=None)

At this point I can see the image, but after I set the xticklabel, I don't see the image anymore only an object reference. (I would post the image, but I don't enough reputation :()

by_school.set_xticklabels('Organization Name',rotation=45)

<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x3971a6a0>

A similar question is posted here: Rotate label text in seaborn factorplot but the solution is not working.

Are you rotating the label in the same notebook cell it was created? You need to be — mbatchkarov, Aug 06 '15 at 15:05
No I wasn't, but now that I am getting this error: set_xticklabels() takes at least 2 arguments (1 given) — Laurennmc, Aug 06 '15 at 15:07

score 60 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

60

You need a different method call, namely .set_rotation for each ticklables. Since you already have the ticklabels, just change their rotations:

for item in by_school.get_xticklabels():
    item.set_rotation(45)

barplot returns a matplotlib.axes object (as of seaborn 0.6.0), therefore you have to rotate the labels this way. In other cases, when the method returns a FacetGrid object, refer to Rotate label text in seaborn factorplot

edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

Community

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answered Aug 06 '15 at 16:50

CT Zhu

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Could also do `plt.setp(by_school.get_xticklabels(), rotation=45)` to save yourself a line of code :) – mwaskom Aug 06 '15 at 18:08
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Also `set_xticklabels` doesn't take positions (unlike `plt.xticks`, an example of an annoying inconsistency in the state machine/object oriented APIs) but the original code didn't work because OP was just passing a single string not a list of labels. – mwaskom Aug 06 '15 at 18:10
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You could also use `plt.xticks(rotation='vertical')` if you imported matplotlib.pyplot as plt. – JHall651 Feb 09 '19 at 04:14
To make the answer a one-liner (if it's important to save one line): `[item.set_rotation(45) for item in by_school.get_xticklabels()]` – Magnus Persson Mar 23 '20 at 19:30
This works for me although if I include a title in the seaborn plot, i.e. `sns.barplot(...).set_title('My title')` , I get AttributeError: 'Text' object has no attribute 'get_xticklabels'. Is there a way around it? – Dudelstein Aug 03 '21 at 09:32

score 51 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 04 '20 at 16:07

51

You can rotate seaborn xticks like so:

sns.barplot(x='Organization Name', y='Score', data=df)

plt.xticks(rotation=70)
plt.tight_layout()

answered Mar 04 '20 at 16:07

wordsforthewise

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Very easy! Thank you! – amc Jun 29 '20 at 12:58
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this seems to be the best solution – user75252 Feb 13 '21 at 14:18
This does not work for me - specifically the plt.xticks overwrites the barplot with an empty one (with rotated ticks). Should I do something differently? I use Python 3.7 and Spyder. – Dudelstein Aug 03 '21 at 09:24
simple and fast. – EnzoY May 02 '22 at 08:13
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@Dudelstein maybe try upgrading your packages to make sure you're on the latest versions. I suspect some older packages or package version mismatches. Also check that you're using the proper installed package you think you are with `import seaborn as sns`; `sns.__file__` and `sns.__version__` for example. If you have multiple Python installations you can sometimes use different packages. from different installations accidentally – wordsforthewise May 03 '22 at 11:01

Amit Vikram Singh · Answer 3 · 2020-09-03T13:32:59.640

48

Use the following code statement:

by_school.set_xticklabels(by_school.get_xticklabels(), 
                          rotation=90, 
                          horizontalalignment='right')

edited Sep 03 '20 at 13:32

answered Jan 17 '18 at 09:40

Amit Vikram Singh

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Also add `horizontalalignment='right'` so that the labels match the ticks. – 6infinity8 Nov 24 '19 at 09:06

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 31 '17 at 16:57

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If you come here to rotate the labels for a seaborn.heatmap, the following should work (based on @Aman's answer at Rotate label text in seaborn factorplot)

pandas_frame = pd.DataFrame(data, index=names, columns=names)
heatmap = seaborn.heatmap(pandas_frame)
loc, labels = plt.xticks()
heatmap.set_xticklabels(labels, rotation=45)
heatmap.set_yticklabels(labels[::-1], rotation=45) # reversed order for y

answered Oct 31 '17 at 16:57

serv-inc

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`AttributeError: 'AxesSubplot' object has no attribute 'xticks'` When this was tried to be reproduced. Any thoughts? – bmc Apr 28 '18 at 23:02
@bmc: Which `matplotlib.__version__` were you using? For version `2.0.0`, `plt.xticks()` worked: ``import seaborn as sns; import pandas as pd; import numpy as np; import matplotlib.pyplot as plt; df = pd.DataFrame(np.eye(3), range(3), range(3)); hm = sns.heatmap(df); plt.xticks(); `` – serv-inc Apr 30 '18 at 05:00

score -2 · Answer 5 · edited Dec 25 '18 at 11:05

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This worked for me:

g.fig.autofmt_xdate()

edited Dec 25 '18 at 11:05

HMD

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answered Dec 25 '18 at 09:39

Kairat Sharshenbaev

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Rotate tick labels for seaborn barplot

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