Space between gpplot2 horizontal legend elements

Question

I have a ggplot2 plot as follows:

library(ggplot2)

ggplot(mtcars, aes(factor(cyl), fill=factor(cyl))) + 
    geom_bar() +
    coord_flip() +
    theme(legend.position = 'top') +
    guides(fill = guide_legend(title=NULL))

I'd like add spacing between the fill elements as follows:

It seems like you should be able to set it with something like `theme(legend.text = element_text(margin = margin(r = 2, unit = 'in')))`, but that doesn't seem to do anything. A hacky (but effective) way to do it is to simply add spaces to the items: `fill=factor(paste(cyl, ' '))` — alistaire, Jul 15 '16 at 18:09
@alistaire, that's much simpler than my hack. You should add it as an answer. — eipi10, Jul 15 '16 at 18:28
Possible duplicate of [Is there a way to change the spacing between legend items in ggplot2?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11366964/is-there-a-way-to-change-the-spacing-between-legend-items-in-ggplot2) — user20650, Jul 16 '16 at 15:01

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 10 '18 at 08:48

8

The issue mentioned by alistaire and Tyler Rinker was solved. Now we can adjust the margins of the element_text`.

ggplot(mtcars, aes(factor(cyl), fill = factor(cyl))) +
  geom_bar() +
  coord_flip() +
  theme(
    legend.position = 'top',
    legend.title = element_blank(),
    legend.text = element_text(margin = margin(r = 2, unit = 'cm'))
  )

answered Aug 10 '18 at 08:48

mpalanco

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This works perfectly. It should now be the most upvoted answer as the issue no longer exists. – Michelle May 05 '20 at 19:05

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 15 '16 at 18:39

4

It really seems something like theme(legend.text = element_text(margin = margin(r = 2, unit = 'in'))) would be the right way to accomplish the task, but that doesn't do anything at all.

Instead, (and not for the first time) I fall back on the Microsoft Word style of alignment-hacking, i.e. just add spaces:

ggplot(mtcars, aes(factor(cyl), fill=factor(paste(cyl, '                    ')))) + 
    geom_bar() +
    coord_flip() +
    theme(legend.position = 'top') +
    guides(fill = guide_legend(title=NULL))

Because there's spaces on the 8 as well, it's a little off-center, but if you just paste them onto the previous labels you can nudge them around as you like.

Apologies for any nightmares caused to graphic designers.

answered Jul 15 '16 at 18:39

alistaire

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There is [an open issue on the use of `margin` in `legend.text`](https://github.com/hadley/ggplot2/issues/1502). – Henrik Jul 15 '16 at 18:41
I'm going to mark this but sounds like this will be fixed in a future version of ggplot2. Thanks! – Tyler Rinker Jul 15 '16 at 19:02
I believe there are a number of related issues open on github. – lmo Jul 16 '16 at 02:41
The issue was closed and now it works, see my answer below. – mpalanco Aug 11 '18 at 14:56

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 03 '17 at 19:31

This is another hack but one that I prefer, as it adds additional white space at the end of each label according to its number of characters. Replace fill = factor(cyl) with

fill = sprintf("%-20s", factor(cyl)).

This pads all strings in the vector with white characters on the right to reach 20 characters total. This is perfect if you have text labels of different lengths. You can change 20 to whatever number you want, or remove the negative sign to add spaces to the left instead of the right. In general sprintf() is a good function to explore and use for formatting text and numbers as desired.

eipi10 · Answer 4 · 2016-07-15T18:22:43.817

This is a hack, but...

Let's add some empty factor levels in cyl between the real levels. Then we'll make sure they're included in the plot (using drop=FALSE) for spacing in the legend, but will set their colors and labels to empty values so that you can't see them in the legend. I found that I also needed to include override.aes=list(color="white") in order to avoid the blank legend key boxes still being ever-so-slightly visible in the legend.

mtcars$cyl = factor(mtcars$cyl, levels=c(4, 11:15, 6, 16:20, 8))
cols = hcl(seq(15,375,length.out=4)[1:3], 100, 65)

ggplot(mtcars, aes(cyl, fill=cyl)) + 
  geom_bar() +
  coord_flip() +
  scale_fill_manual(values=c(cols[1], rep("white",5), cols[2], rep("white",5), cols[3]), 
                    labels=c(4, rep("",5), 6, rep("",5), 8), drop=FALSE) +
  theme(legend.position = 'top') +
  guides(fill = guide_legend(title=NULL, nrow=1, override.aes=list(color="white")))

Tung · Answer 5 · 2018-07-22T15:20:51.260

1

With ggplot2 v3.0.0, we can use legend.spacing.x to manipulate the space between legend keys.

library(ggplot2)

ggplot(mtcars, aes(factor(cyl), fill = factor(cyl))) + 
  geom_bar() +
  coord_flip() +
  theme(legend.position = 'top') +
  guides(fill = guide_legend(title = "Cyl")) +
  theme(legend.spacing.x = unit(0.5, 'cm'))

Created on 2018-05-30 by the reprex package (v0.2.0).

edited Jul 22 '18 at 15:20

answered May 30 '18 at 23:38

Tung

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Great +1. If only it didn't space the text from the legend color/symbol in horizontol legends. Ideally, we could space each name-key pair from each other, not just space out all the items regardless. – Jack Wasey Aug 03 '18 at 23:32
1

@JackWasey: did you mean something like this https://stackoverflow.com/a/50885122/786542? – Tung Aug 04 '18 at 06:13
this is not what the OP is asking for, @Tung. He wants increased spacing, but maintenance of the distance between the text and its respective label (so the pink, green, orange spaced apart.. but the 4, 6 and 8 nestled up against the colour blocks. How this isn't a standard option is beyond me. – kabammi Sep 23 '20 at 02:52
OK, I've found something, I'll post it below. – kabammi Sep 23 '20 at 02:59

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 23 '20 at 03:00

Not a hack here, this is the way to do it:

Use theme(legend.text = element_text(margin = margin(r = 2, unit = 'cm')))

ggplot(mtcars, aes(factor(cyl), fill = factor(cyl))) +
  geom_bar() +
  coord_flip() +
  theme(
    legend.position = 'top',
    legend.title = element_blank(),
    legend.text = element_text(margin = margin(r = 2, unit = 'cm'))
  )

Will do it.

Space between gpplot2 horizontal legend elements

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