Open In App

How to Rotate X-Axis Tick Label Text in Matplotlib?

Improve
Improve
Like Article
Like
Save
Share
Report

Matplotlib is an amazing and one of the most widely used data visualization libraries in Python for plots of arrays. It is a multi-platform data visualization library built on NumPy arrays and designed to work with the broader SciPy stack. It is much popular because of its customization options as we can tweak about any element from its hierarchy of objects.

Rotating X-axis labels in Matplotlib

To rotate X-axis labels, there are various methods provided by Matplotlib i.e. change it on the Figure-level or by changing it on an Axes-level or individually by using built-in functions. Some methods are listed below :

Let’s create a simple line plot which we will modify further

Python3




# Import libraries
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
 
# Creating dataset
x = np.arange(0, np.pi*2, 0.05)
y = np.sin(x**2)
 
# Creating plot
plt.plot(x, y)
 
# Setting title
plt.title('Simple Example')
 
# Show plot
plt.show()


Output :

Rotating X-axis labels in Matplotlib

 

Rotate X-Axis Tick Label Text using plt.xticks()

In this example, we will rotate X-axis labels on Figure-level using plt.xticks().

Syntax: matplotlib.pyplot.xticks(ticks=None, labels=None, **kwargs)

Python3




# Import libraries
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
 
# Creating dataset
x = np.arange(0, np.pi*2, 0.05)
y = np.sin(x**2)
 
# Creating plot
plt.plot(x, y)
 
# Rotating X-axis labels
plt.xticks(rotation = 25)
 
# Setting title
plt.title('Rotating using plt.xticks()')
 
# Show plot
plt.show()


Output :

Rotating X-axis labels in Matplotlib

 

Rotate X-Axis Tick Label Text using tick.set_rotation()

In this example, we will rotate X-axis labels on Axes-level using tick.set_rotation().

Syntax: Axes.get_xticks(self, minor=False)

Python3




# Import libraries
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
 
# Creating dataset
x = np.arange(0, np.pi*2, 0.05)
y = np.sin(x**2)
 
# Creating Figure
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
 
# Creating plot
ax.plot(x, y)
 
# Rotating X-axis labels
ax.set_xticklabels(ax.get_xticks(), rotation = 50)
 
# Setting title
plt.title('Rotating using tick.set_rotation()')
 
# Show plot
plt.show()


Output:

Rotate X-Axis Tick Label Text in Matplotlib

 

Rotate X-Axis Tick Label Text using ax.set_xticklabels()

In this example, we will rotate X-axis labels individually by using the built-in ax.set_xticklabels() function.

Syntax: Axes.set_xticklabels(self, labels, fontdict=None, minor=False, **kwargs)

Python3




# Import libraries
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
 
# Creating dataset
x = np.arange(0, np.pi*2, 0.05)
y = np.sin(x**2)
 
# Creating Figure
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
 
# Creating plot
ax.plot(x, y)
 
# Rotating X-axis labels
for tick in ax.get_xticklabels():
    tick.set_rotation(75)
 
# Setting title
plt.title('Rotating using ax.set_xticklabels()')
 
# Show plot
plt.show()


Output:

Rotate X-Axis Tick Label Text in Matplotlib

 

Rotate X-Axis Tick Label Text using ax.xtick_params() function

In this example, we will rotate X-axis labels individually by using the built-in ax.xtick_params() function.

Syntax: matplotlib.pyplot.tick_params(axis=’both’, **kwargs)

Python3




# Import libraries
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
 
# Creating dataset
x = np.arange(0, np.pi*2, 0.05)
y = np.sin(x**2)
 
# Creating Figure
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
 
# Creating plot
ax.plot(x, y)
 
# Rotating X-axis labels
ax.tick_params(axis='x', labelrotation = 100)
 
# Setting title
plt.title('Rotating using ax.xtick_params()')
 
# Show plot
plt.show()


Output:

 



Last Updated : 30 Sep, 2022
Like Article
Save Article
Previous
Next
Share your thoughts in the comments
Similar Reads