How to remove xticks from a plot

Question

I have a semilogx plot and I would like to remove the xticks. I tried:

plt.gca().set_xticks([])
plt.xticks([])
ax.set_xticks([])

The grid disappears (ok), but small ticks (at the place of the main ticks) remain. How to remove them?

Answer 1

The plt.tick_params method is very useful for stuff like this. This code turns off major and minor ticks and removes the labels from the x-axis.

Note that there is also ax.tick_params for matplotlib.axes.Axes objects.

from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
plt.plot(range(10))
plt.tick_params(
    axis='x',          # changes apply to the x-axis
    which='both',      # both major and minor ticks are affected
    bottom=False,      # ticks along the bottom edge are off
    top=False,         # ticks along the top edge are off
    labelbottom=False) # labels along the bottom edge are off
plt.show()
plt.savefig('plot')
plt.clf()

Answer 2

Not exactly what the OP was asking for, but a simple way to disable all axes lines, ticks and labels is to simply call:

plt.axis('off')

Answer 3

Alternatively, you can pass an empty tick position and label as

# for matplotlib.pyplot
# ---------------------
plt.xticks([], [])
# for axis object
# ---------------
# from Anakhand May 5 at 13:08
# for major ticks
ax.set_xticks([])
# for minor ticks
ax.set_xticks([], minor=True)

Answer 4

Here is an alternative solution that I found on the matplotlib mailing list:

import matplotlib.pylab as plt

x = range(1000)
ax = plt.axes()
ax.semilogx(x, x)
ax.xaxis.set_ticks_position('none') 

Answer 5

There is a better, and simpler, solution than the one given by John Vinyard. Use NullLocator:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.plot(range(10))
plt.gca().xaxis.set_major_locator(plt.NullLocator())
plt.show()
plt.savefig('plot')

Answer 6

Try this to remove the labels (but not the ticks):

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.setp( ax.get_xticklabels(), visible=False)

example

Answer 7

This snippet might help in removing the xticks only.

from matplotlib import pyplot as plt    
plt.xticks([])

This snippet might help in removing the xticks and yticks both.

from matplotlib import pyplot as plt    
plt.xticks([]),plt.yticks([])

Answer 8

Those of you looking for a short command to switch off all ticks and labels should be fine with

plt.tick_params(top=False, bottom=False, left=False, right=False,
                labelleft=False, labelbottom=False)

which allows type bool for respective parameters since version matplotlib>=2.1.1

For custom tick settings, the docs are helpful:

https://matplotlib.org/api/_as_gen/matplotlib.axes.Axes.tick_params.html

Answer 9

# remove all the ticks (both axes), and tick labels on the Y axis
plt.tick_params(top='off', bottom='off', left='off', right='off', labelleft='off', labelbottom='on')

Answer 10

Modify the following rc parameters by adding the commands to the script:

plt.rcParams['xtick.bottom'] = False
plt.rcParams['xtick.labelbottom'] = False

A sample matplotlibrc file is depicted in this section of the matplotlib documentation, which lists many other parameters like changing figure size, color of figure, animation settings, etc.

Answer 11

If you want to remove tick labels but keep the ticks and grids, this code snippet will work.

plt.gca().axes.xaxis.set_ticklabels([])
plt.gca().axes.yaxis.set_ticklabels([])
plt.grid(alpha = 0.2)

Answer 12

It is possible to simply change the visibility:

ax.xaxis.set_visible(False)

Answer 13

A simple solution to this problem is to set the color of the xticks to White or to whatever the background color is. This will hide the text of the xticks but not the xticks itself.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.plot()
plt.xticks(color='white')
plt.show()

Result