Matplotlib – Change Slider Color

In this article, we will see how to change the slider color of a plot in Matplotlib. First of all, let’s learn what is a slider widget. The Slider widget in matplotlib is used to create a scrolling slider, and we can use the value of the scrolled slider to make changes in our python program. By default, the color of the slider is Blue so, we are going to learn to change the color of the slider.

Syntax: Slider(dimensions, name, minimumValue, maximumValue, initialValue, color);

Parameters:

• dimensions: This parameter takes plt.axes() object to determine dimensions of slider
• name: Name of slider
• minimumValue: Minimum possible value of slider
• maximumValue: Maximum possible value of slider
• initialValue: Initial value of slider
• color: color of slider fill

Installation

Windows, Linux, and macOS distributions have matplotlib and most of its dependencies as wheel packages. Run the following command to install matplotlib package :

python -mpip install -U matplotlib

Note: Slider has a lot of arguments. We are interested in the color argument.

Example 1: 

Using the color name, we modify the color of the slider. There are ‘red’, ‘blue’, ‘green’, ‘yellow’, ‘brown’, etc… color names available.

Python

# import libraries
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.widgets import Slider

# define dimensions
width = 0.8
height = 0.25
minValue = 1
maxValue = 20

# Create dimensions of slider
dimentions_of_slider = plt.axes([0, 0, width, height])

# Create slider
mySlider = Slider(dimentions_of_slider, 'My Slider',
                  minValue, maxValue, valinit=10,
                  color='green')

# Show Graph
plt.show()

Output: 

Example 2: 

This example is similar to the above example, but we are using hex code for defining the color. When we need the exact color we want we use HEX Code of color.

Python

# import libraries
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.widgets import Slider

# define dimensions
width = 0.8
height = 0.25
minValue = 1
maxValue = 20

# Create dimensions of slider
dimentions_of_slider = plt.axes([0, 0, width, height])

# Create slider
# Notice the HEX color code below
mySlider = Slider(dimentions_of_slider, 'My Slider',
                  minValue, maxValue, valinit=10,
                  color='#000000')

# Show Graph
plt.show()

Output:

Example 3:

In this example, we are creating multiple sliders with different colors using different formats to mention the colors. 

Python

# import libraries
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.widgets import Slider

# define dimensions
width = 0.8
height = 0.25
minValue = 1
maxValue = 20

# define sliders
dimentions_of_slider1 = plt.axes([0, 0.3, width, height])
dimentions_of_slider2 = plt.axes([0, 0, width, height])

# Using name of Color
mySlider1 = Slider(dimentions_of_slider1, 'My Slider1',
                   minValue, maxValue, valinit=10,
                   color='brown')

# Using HEX Code of Color
mySlider2 = Slider(dimentions_of_slider2, 'My Slider2',
                   minValue, maxValue, valinit=10,
                   color='#123456')

# show the plot
plt.show()

Output: