To remove the rectangular frame of a matplotlib plot, you can use the respective axes object’s set_frame_on()
function and pass False
as an argument.
This will remove the rectangular bounding box but will not alter the ticks and tick labels.
Example 1 – Remove the frame from a plot
Let’s look at an example. First, we will create a simple plot and how it looks with the rectangular frame which is present by default.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt # x values - years x = [2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020] # y values - 1 USD in INR y = [46.67, 53.44, 56.57, 62.33, 62.97, 66.46, 67.79, 70.09, 70.39, 76.38] # plot x and y on scatter plot plt.scatter(x, y) # add axes labels plt.xlabel('Year') plt.ylabel('1USD in INR')
Output:

Now, let’s create the above plot but without the frame using the axes object’s set_frame_on()
function. You can use the pyplot object’s gca()
function to get the current plot’s axes object and then apply the set_frame_on()
function.
# plot x and y on scatter plot plt.scatter(x, y) # add axes labels plt.xlabel('Year') plt.ylabel('1USD in INR') # remove the rectangular frame of the plot plt.gca().set_frame_on(False)
Output:

The rectangular frame is now removed.
Example 2 – Remove the frame from subplots
You can similarly remove the frame from a subplot as well. For this, use the subplot’s axes object’s set_frame_on()
function.
Let’s first create a plot with two subplots.
fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(10, 5)) # plot the first subplot ax1.scatter(x, y) # add axis labels ax1.set_xlabel('Year') ax1.set_ylabel('1USD in INR') # plot the second subplot ax2.scatter(x, y) # add axis labels ax2.set_xlabel('Year') ax2.set_ylabel('1USD in INR')
Output:

Here we created two subplots in a single row. The data in the subplots is the same but that is not important what we want to focus on is to how can we remove the frame from a subplot.
Let’s now plot the same subplots again but this time with the frame of the first subplot removed.
fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(10, 5)) # plot the first subplot ax1.scatter(x, y) # add axis labels ax1.set_xlabel('Year') ax1.set_ylabel('1USD in INR') # remove the rectangular frame of the subplot ax1.set_frame_on(False) # plot the second subplot ax2.scatter(x, y) # add axis labels ax2.set_xlabel('Year') ax2.set_ylabel('1USD in INR')
Output:

The frame of the first subplot is removed but its ticks and tick labels are intact.
You might also be interested in –
- Add Title to Each Subplot in Matplotlib
- Matplolib – Hide Axis in a Plot (Code with Examples)
- Matplotlib – Change the Number of Ticks in a Plot
- Remove Tick Labels from a Plot in Matplotlib
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