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I want to add an icon to a custom button in a matplotlib figure toolbar. How can I do that? So far, I have the following code:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.rcParams["toolbar"] = "toolmanager"
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.backend_tools import ToolToggleBase

class NewTool(ToolToggleBase):
    ...[tool code]

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.plot([1, 2, 3], label="legend")
ax.legend()
fig.canvas.manager.toolmanager.add_tool("newtool", NewTool)
fig.canvas.manager.toolbar.add_tool(toolmanager.get_tool("newtool"), "toolgroup")
fig.show()

For now, the only thing that it does is adding a new button (which do what I want) but the icon is only the tool's name i.e.: "newtool". How can I change this for a custom icon like a png image?

fgoudra
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1 Answers1

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The tool can have an attribute image, which denotes the path to a png image.

import matplotlib
matplotlib.rcParams["toolbar"] = "toolmanager"
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.backend_tools import ToolBase

class NewTool(ToolBase):
    image = r"C:\path\to\hiker.png"

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.plot([1, 2, 3], label="legend")
ax.legend()
tm = fig.canvas.manager.toolmanager
tm.add_tool("newtool", NewTool)
fig.canvas.manager.toolbar.add_tool(tm.get_tool("newtool"), "toolgroup")
plt.show()

enter image description here

ImportanceOfBeingErnest
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    I tried this solution, there is also a similar solution on matplotlib docs, but I cannot reproduce it. I get the following error: tm.add_tool("newtool", NewTool) AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'add_tool' Seems weird that plt.figure() does not contain canvas. Any ideas? – bad_locality Jun 25 '20 at 12:12
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    I get the same _AttributeError_ in Jupyter but it works fine within a standard IDE (even though I use the same interpreter in both). It looks like it has to do with the choice of backend. – Theom Oct 09 '20 at 11:26
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    Since this was the first page I stumbled upon in my searches, and I also wanted to know about Matplotlib in Jupyter, here is a Gihub issue where it is discussed: [Make the toolbar customizable · Issue #270 · matplotlib/ipympl · GitHub](https://github.com/matplotlib/ipympl/issues/270) – sdbbs Sep 12 '21 at 17:34