Change Spacing Between Horizontal Legend Items of ggplot2 Plot in R

In this article, we are going to see how to change the space between horizontal legend items using the ggplot2 bar plot in R programming language.

Here we are using a bar graph the same can be done to any other plot. For creating a simple bar plot we will use the function geom_bar( ).

Syntax:

geom_bar(stat, fill, color, width)

Parameters :  

• stat : Set the stat parameter to identify the mode.
• fill : Represents color inside the bars.
• color : Represents color of outlines of the bars.
• width : Represents width of the bars.

Data in use:

Let us first create a regular plot so that the difference is apparent.

Example:

R

# Bar Plot with Legend at bottom
library(ggplot2)

# Inserting data
runs <- data.frame(match=c("M-1","M-2","M-3","M-4"),
                   run=c(33, 45, 66, 50))

IPL <-ggplot(data=runs, aes(x=match, y=run,fill=match)) +
  coord_flip()+
  geom_bar(stat="identity")+
  theme_classic()+
  theme(legend.position = 'bottom')
IPL

Output:

legend with default spacing

To change the space between the horizontal legends we have to use the command below:

legend.x = unit( unit_value, ‘cm’)

The command has to be written inside the theme( ) function where we have already assigned the position of the legend before.

Example:

R

library(ggplot2)

# Inserting data
runs <- data.frame(match=c("M-1","M-2","M-3","M-4"),
                   run=c(33, 45, 66, 50))

# spacing of 0.5 cm
IPL+theme(legend.spacing.x = unit(0.5,'cm'))

# spacing of 1 cm
IPL+theme(legend.spacing.x = unit(1,'cm'))

Output:

Legend with space of 0.5 cm

Legend with space of 1 cm