Turning off some legends in a ggplot

Question

asked Jul 4, 2019 in R Programming by leealex956 (7.3k points)
edited Jan 8 by admin

Suppose I have a ggplot with more than one legend.

mov <- subset(movies, length != "")
(p0 <- ggplot(mov, aes(year, rating, colour = length, shape = mpaa)) +
geom_point()
)

I can turn off the display of all the legends like this:

(p1 <- p0 + theme(legend.position = "none"))

Passing show_guide = FALSE to geom_point turns off the shape legend.

(p2 <- ggplot(mov, aes(year, rating, colour = length, shape = mpaa)) +
geom_point(show_guide = FALSE)
)

But what if I want to turn off the color legend instead? There doesn't seem to be a way of telling show_guide which legend to apply its behavior to. And there is no show_guide argument for scales or aesthetics.

(p3 <- ggplot(mov, aes(year, rating, colour = length, shape = mpaa)) +
scale_colour_discrete(show_guide = FALSE) +
geom_point()
)
# Error in discrete_scale
(p4 <- ggplot(mov, aes(year, rating, shape = mpaa)) +
aes(colour = length, show_guide = FALSE) +
geom_point()
)
#draws both legends

I want to be able to do something like

p0 + guides(
colour = guide_legend(show = FALSE)
)

guide_legend doesn't have a show argument.

How do I specify which legends get displayed?

2 Answers

anonymous · Answer 1 · 2019-07-04T13:53:07+0000

To turn off legend for a specific aesthetic, you can use the guides() function as follows:

guides(color = FALSE) #To turn off color legend
guides(fill = FALSE) #To turn off fill legend
guides(shape = FALSE) #To turn off shape legend

You can also use scale_color_continuous(guide = FALSE) to suppress the color legend since the length is a continuous variable.

For example:

Plot with all legends:

ggplot(data = mtcars, aes(x = mpg, y = disp, group = gear)) +
geom_point(aes(color = vs)) +
geom_point(aes(shape = factor(cyl))) +
geom_line(aes(linetype = factor(gear))) +
geom_smooth(aes(fill = factor(gear), color = gear)) +
theme_bw()

Plot without the color legend:

ggplot(data = mtcars, aes(x = mpg, y = disp, group = gear)) +
geom_point(aes(color = vs)) +
geom_point(aes(shape = factor(cyl))) +
geom_line(aes(linetype = factor(gear))) +
geom_smooth(aes(fill = factor(gear), color = gear)) +
theme_bw() +
guides(color = FALSE)

If you want to explore more in R programming then watch this R programming tutorial for beginners:

Asha · Answer 2 · 2024-11-08T12:22:37+0000

If your desire is to remove the legend from one aesthetic, execute the guides() function:

guides(color = FALSE)

guides(fill = FALSE)

guides(shape = FALSE)

Besides, you can apply scale_color_continuous(guide = FALSE) to eliminate the color legend since the contribution is a continuous variable.

For instance:

Plot with all legends:

ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, disp, group = gear)) +

geom_point(aes(color = vs)) +

geom_point(aes(shape = factor(cyl))) +

geom_line(aes(linetype = factor(gear))) +

geom_smooth(aes(fill = factor(gear), color = gear)) +

theme_bw()