How to put the legend outside the plot

legend, matplotlib, python, seaborn

Solution

- You can make the legend text smaller by specifying `set_size` of `FontProperties`.

- Resources:

- Legend guide

- `matplotlib.legend`

- `matplotlib.pyplot.legend`

- `matplotlib.font_manager`

- `set_size(self, size)`

- Valid font size are xx-small, x-small, small, medium, large, x-large, xx-large, larger, smaller, and None.

- Real Python: Python Plotting With Matplotlib (Guide)

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.font_manager import FontProperties

fontP = FontProperties()
fontP.set_size('xx-small')

p1, = plt.plot([1, 2, 3], label='Line 1')
p2, = plt.plot([3, 2, 1], label='Line 2')
plt.legend(handles=[p1, p2], title='title', bbox_to_anchor=(1.05, 1), loc='upper left', prop=fontP)

- `fontsize='xx-small'` also works, without importing `FontProperties`.

plt.legend(handles=[p1, p2], title='title', bbox_to_anchor=(1.05, 1), loc='upper left', fontsize='xx-small')

Problem

I have a series of 20 plots (not subplots) to be made in a single figure. I want the legend to be outside of the box. At the same time, I do not want to change the axes, as the size of the figure gets reduced. - I want to keep the legend box outside the plot area (I want the legend to be outside at the right side of the plot area). - Is there a way to reduce the font size of the text inside the legend box, so that the size of the legend box will be small?

Original source

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