Matplotlib legend: labels above markers

Question

I have a plot with multiple lines, each labelled separately. I'd like to put a legend in the plot so that individual lines can be identified. The default ordering of labels and markers looks something like:

marker : label
marker : label
marker : label
... and so on.

For various aesthetic reasons I'd like the number of columns in my legend to equal the number of lines (and labels), which I change using the ncol option. So, currently, my legend looks like:

marker : label marker : label marker : label

It would be much clearer for me, however, to have the labels above the markers in this arrangement. What I would like is something like:

label label label
marker marker marker

I'm wondering if there is a "quick fix" way to achieve such a legend.

Have you found a "quick fix" to this problem yet? I would be interested to do this as as well. — Jean-Sébastien, Aug 25 '15 at 12:31
From the documentation it seems that the only options are marker : label or label : marker. — pceccon, Apr 25 '16 at 18:32

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 20 '16 at 17:10

In the end the way I went about this was to manually configure the positions of the text items in the legend using legend.get_texts() to iterate over each text object. Some dummy code:

for txt in legend.get_texts():
    txt.set_ha("center") # horizontal alignment of text item
    txt.set_x(-5) # x-position
    txt.set_y(10) # y-position

By increasing the y-position you push the label up (i.e. above the marker). Similarly by decreasing the x-position it's possible to achieve alignment over the top of the marker.

Matplotlib legend: labels above markers

1 Answers1