Summary
This document illustrates how to place legends in different positions in a ggplot.
Prepare data
Run the following code to load the data used in this document:
suppressPackageStartupMessages({
library(dplyr)
library(tibble)
library(swissknife)
library(ggplot2)
})
loadExampleData("mycars")
`mycars`: re-encoded version of `datasets::mtcars`
# A tibble: 32 × 13
mpg cyl disp hp drat wt qsec vs am gear carb
<dbl> <fct> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
1 21 6 160 110 3.9 2.62 16.5 0 1 4 4
2 21 6 160 110 3.9 2.88 17.0 0 1 4 4
3 22.8 4 108 93 3.85 2.32 18.6 1 1 4 1
4 21.4 6 258 110 3.08 3.22 19.4 1 0 3 1
5 18.7 8 360 175 3.15 3.44 17.0 0 0 3 2
6 18.1 6 225 105 2.76 3.46 20.2 1 0 3 1
7 14.3 8 360 245 3.21 3.57 15.8 0 0 3 4
8 24.4 4 147. 62 3.69 3.19 20 1 0 4 2
9 22.8 4 141. 95 3.92 3.15 22.9 1 0 4 2
10 19.2 6 168. 123 3.92 3.44 18.3 1 0 4 4
# ℹ 22 more rows
# ℹ 2 more variables: engine_shape <fct>, transmission <fct>
Step 1 - construct basic plot
Code
gg <- ggplot(mycars,
aes(x = mpg, y = disp, color = cyl)) +
geom_point(size = 4) +
scale_color_manual(values = c(`4` = "purple", `6` = "orange",
`8` = "forestgreen"),
name = "Number of\ncylinders") +
labs(x = "Miles/gallon", y = "Displacement") +
theme_bw(base_size = 13)
gg
Step 2 - move legend to the bottom
Code
gg + theme(legend.position = "bottom")
Step 3 - move legend inside the canvas (top right corner)
Code
gg + theme(legend.position = "inside",
legend.position.inside = c(0.97, 0.97),
legend.justification = c(1, 1),
legend.background = element_rect(color = "black"),
legend.title.position = "left")
Step 4 - hide specific legend
Use the cyl column for both color and shape, but only show the legend for the shape.
Code
ggplot(mycars,
aes(x = mpg, y = disp, color = cyl, shape = cyl)) +
geom_point(size = 4) +
scale_color_manual(values = c(`4` = "purple", `6` = "orange",
`8` = "forestgreen"),
name = "Number of\ncylinders") +
labs(x = "Miles/gallon", y = "Displacement") +
theme_bw(base_size = 13) +
guides(color = "none",
shape = guide_legend(title = "Number of\ncylinders"))
Step 5 - place different legends in different positions
Code
ggplot(mycars,
aes(x = mpg, y = disp, color = gear, shape = cyl)) +
geom_point(size = 4) +
scale_color_continuous(name = "Number of\ngears") +
scale_shape_discrete(name = "Number of\ncylinders") +
labs(x = "Miles/gallon", y = "Displacement") +
theme_bw(base_size = 13) +
guides(color = guide_colorbar(position = "right"),
shape = guide_legend(position = "bottom"))
Session info
Code
sessioninfo::session_info()
─ Session info ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
setting value
version R version 4.5.2 (2025-10-31)
os macOS Sequoia 15.7.1
system aarch64, darwin20
ui X11
language (EN)
collate en_US.UTF-8
ctype en_US.UTF-8
tz Europe/Zurich
date 2025-11-03
pandoc 3.6.4 @ /usr/local/bin/ (via rmarkdown)
quarto 1.7.28 @ /usr/local/bin/quarto
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