Six Things I Always Google When Using ggplot2

Remove the legend

theme(legend.position = “none”)

Ahh… this one always gets me. Sometimes when your color is mostly just for aesthetics, it doesn’t make sense to also have a color legend. This removes the legend and makes the graph look cleaner.

spotify_songs %>%
ggplot(aes(x = playlist_genre, fill = playlist_genre)) +
geom_histogram(stat = "count") +
theme(legend.position = "none")

Change Legend Title and Labels

scale_fill_discrete(name = “New Legend Title”, labels = c(“lab1” = “Label 1”, “lab2” = “Label 2”))

Alright, say I do want the legend. How do I make it something readable?

spotify_songs %>%
ggplot(aes(x = playlist_genre, fill = playlist_genre)) +
geom_histogram(stat = "count") +
scale_fill_discrete(name = "Playlist Genre",
labels = c("edm" = "EDM",
"latin" = "Latin",
"pop" = "Pop",
"r&b" = "R&B",
"rap" = "Rap",
"rock" = "Rock"))

Manually Change Colors

scale_fill_manual(“New Legend Title”, values = c(“lab1” = “#000000”, “lab2” = “#FFFFFF”))

This is a bit tricker, in that you cannot use scale_fill_manual and scale_fill_discrete separately on the same plot as they override each other. However, if you want to change the labels and the colors together, you can use scale_fill_manual like below.

spotify_songs %>%
ggplot(aes(x = playlist_genre, fill = playlist_genre)) +
geom_histogram(stat = "count") +
scale_fill_manual(name = "Playlist Genre",
labels = c("edm" = "EDM",
"latin" = "Latin",
"pop" = "Pop",
"r&b" = "R&B",
"rap" = "Rap",
"rock" = "Rock"),
values = c("edm" = "#68B39B",
"latin" = "#F6C7FF",
"pop" = "#ADFFE5",
"r&b" = "#CCB576",
"rap" = "#B3A070",
"rock" = "#d3d3d3"))

Remove X Axis Labels

theme(axis.title.x = element_blank(), axis.text.x = element_blank(), axis.ticks.x = element_blank())

In this case, since we have a legend, we don’t need any x axis labels. Sometimes I use this if there’s redundant information or if it otherwise makes the graph look cleaner.

spotify_songs %>%
ggplot(aes(x = playlist_genre, fill = playlist_genre)) +
geom_histogram(stat = "count") +
scale_fill_manual(name = "Playlist Genre",
labels = c("edm" = "EDM",
"latin" = "Latin",
"pop" = "Pop",
"r&b" = "R&B",
"rap" = "Rap",
"rock" = "Rock"),
values = c("edm" = "#68B39B",
"latin" = "#F6C7FF",
"pop" = "#ADFFE5",
"r&b" = "#CCB576",
"rap" = "#B3A070",
"rock" = "#d3d3d3")) +
theme(axis.title.x = element_blank(),
axis.text.x = element_blank(),
axis.ticks.x = element_blank())

Start the Y Axis at a Specific Number

scale_y_continuous(name = “New Y Axis Title”, limits = c(0, 1000000))

Often times, we want our graph’s y axis to start at 0. In this example it already does, but this handy parameter allows us to set exactly what we want our y axis to be.

spotify_songs %>%
ggplot(aes(x = playlist_genre, fill = playlist_genre)) +
geom_histogram(stat = "count") +
scale_fill_manual(name = "Playlist Genre",
labels = c("edm" = "EDM",
"latin" = "Latin",
"pop" = "Pop",
"r&b" = "R&B",
"rap" = "Rap",
"rock" = "Rock"),
values = c("edm" = "#68B39B",
"latin" = "#F6C7FF",
"pop" = "#ADFFE5",
"r&b" = "#CCB576",
"rap" = "#B3A070",
"rock" = "#d3d3d3")) +
theme(axis.title.x = element_blank(),
axis.text.x = element_blank(),
axis.ticks.x = element_blank()) +
scale_y_continuous(name = "Count", limits = c(0, 10000))

Use scales on the Y Axis

scale_y_continuous(label = scales::format)

Depending on our data, we may want the y axis to be formatted a certain way (using dollar signs, commas, percentage signs, etc.). The handy {scales} package allows us to do that easily.

spotify_songs %>%
ggplot(aes(x = playlist_genre, fill = playlist_genre)) +
geom_histogram(stat = "count") +
scale_fill_manual(name = "Playlist Genre",
labels = c("edm" = "EDM",
"latin" = "Latin",
"pop" = "Pop",
"r&b" = "R&B",
"rap" = "Rap",
"rock" = "Rock"),
values = c("edm" = "#68B39B",
"latin" = "#F6C7FF",
"pop" = "#ADFFE5",
"r&b" = "#CCB576",
"rap" = "#B3A070",
"rock" = "#d3d3d3")) +
theme(axis.title.x = element_blank(),
axis.text.x = element_blank(),
axis.ticks.x = element_blank()) +
scale_y_continuous(name = "Count", limits = c(0, 10000),
labels = scales::comma)

There we have it! Six things I always eventually end up Googling when I am making plots using {ggplot2}. Hopefully now I can just look at this page instead of searching each and every time!