Remove Facet_Wrap Labels Completely

Remove facet_wrap labels completely

For ggplot v2.1.0 or higher, use element_blank() to remove unwanted elements:

library(MASS) # To get the data
library(ggplot2)

qplot(
  week,
  y,
  data = bacteria,
  group = ID,
  geom = c('point', 'line'),
  xlab = '',
  ylab = ''
) + 
facet_wrap(~ ID) + 
theme(
  strip.background = element_blank(),
  strip.text.x = element_blank()
)

In this case, the element you're trying to remove is called strip.

---

Alternative using ggplot grob layout

In older versions of ggplot (before v2.1.0), the strip text occupies rows in the gtable layout.

element_blank removes the text and the background, but it does not remove the space that the row occupied.

This code removes those rows from the layout:

library(ggplot2)
library(grid)

p <- qplot(
  week,
  y,
  data = bacteria,
  group = ID,
  geom = c('point', 'line'),
  xlab = '',
  ylab = ''
) + 
facet_wrap(~ ID)

# Get the ggplot grob
gt <- ggplotGrob(p)

# Locate the tops of the plot panels
panels <- grep("panel", gt$layout$name)
top <- unique(gt$layout$t[panels])

# Remove the rows immediately above the plot panel
gt = gt[-(top-1), ]

# Draw it
grid.newpage()
grid.draw(gt)

Getting rid of facet_grid labels on those gray boxes?

The following would do that:

p <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, wt, col=factor(cyl))) + geom_point()
p <- p + facet_grid(cyl ~ .)
p <- p +theme(strip.text.y = element_blank())

Without rectangles

p <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, wt, col=factor(cyl))) + geom_point()
p <- p + facet_grid(cyl ~ .)
p <- p + theme(strip.background = element_blank(),
   strip.text.y = element_blank())

How to remove only some facet labels?

It's not at all perfect, but I'll post this hoping is still better than nothing.

The use of as_labeller() and labeller() may get you what you need.

Update

Easiest solution was to split Species and var in two labellers functions.

facet_labeller_top <- function(variable, value) {
  c(
    "Setosa", 
    "",
    "",
    "",
    "Versicolor", 
    "",
    "",
    "",
    "Virginica", 
    "",
    "",
    ""
  )
}

facet_labeller_bottom <- function(variable, value) {
  c(
    "Petal.Length", 
    "Petal.Width",
    "Sepal.Length",
    "Sepal.Width",
    "Petal.Length", 
    "Petal.Width",
    "Sepal.Length",
    "Sepal.Width",
    "Petal.Length", 
    "Petal.Width",
    "Sepal.Length",
    "Sepal.Width"
  )
}

Result:

ggplot(dat) +
  geom_point(aes(x = 1, y = val)) +
  facet_wrap(Species~var, labeller = labeller(Species=as_labeller(facet_labeller_top),
                                              var = as_labeller(facet_labeller_bottom)))

Data example:

library(tidyr)
library(ggplot2)

dat <- iris %>%
  gather(var, val, Sepal.Length:Petal.Width) 

Turn off clipping of facet labels

There is a feature request with an open PR on the ggplot2 github to make strip clipping optional (disclaimer: I filed the issue and opened the PR). Hopefully, the ggplot2 team will approve it for their next version.

In the meantime you could download the PR from github and try it out.

library(ggplot2) # remotes::install_github("tidyverse/ggplot2#4223")

df <- data.frame(treatment = factor(c(rep("A small label", 5), rep("A slightly too long label", 5))),
                 var1 = c(1, 4, 5, 7, 2, 8, 9, 1, 4, 7),
                 var2 = c(2, 8, 11, 13, 4, 10, 11, 2, 6, 10))

# Plot scatter graph with faceting by 'treatment'
p <- ggplot(df, aes(x = var1, y = var2)) + 
  geom_point() + 
  facet_wrap(treatment ~ ., ncol = 2) +
  theme(strip.clip = "off")

ggsave(filename = "Graph1.eps", plot = p, device = "eps", width = 60, height = 60, units = "mm")

How to control which facet_wrap labels are displayed

The easiest way would be to adjust the labeler function to only extract labels for the first variable. You can do that with

mpg %>%
  filter(manufacturer=='audi')%>%
  ggplot(aes(cty, hwy)) + 
  geom_point(aes(col = model)) +
  facet_wrap(~year+model, labeller=function(x) {x[1]})

The other way is to create an interaction variable so you are only faceting on one variable and then you can change the labeller to strip out the name of the second value. That would look like this

mpg %>%
  filter(manufacturer=='audi')%>%
  ggplot(aes(cty, hwy)) + 
  geom_point(aes(col = model)) +
  facet_wrap(~interaction(year,model), labeller=as_labeller(function(x) gsub("\\..*$", "", x)))

Arrange faceted plots in a grid - how to completely remove facet labels to avoid overlapping

Eventually, using rect = element_blank() in theme when making g_bottom and then adding panel.border = element_rect(colour = "black") seems to do the trick. I still fail to understand why the initial trials didn't work as expected.

library(ggplot2)
library(cowplot)

g <- ggplot(mpg, aes(class)) + 
    geom_bar() + 
    facet_grid(. ~ year) +
    theme_bw()

g_bottom <- g +
    theme(
        strip.text = element_blank(),
        rect = element_blank(),
        panel.border = element_rect(colour = "black")
    )

g_top <- g +
    labs(x = element_blank()) +
    theme(
        axis.text.x = element_blank(),
        axis.ticks.x = element_blank()
    )

plot_grid(g_top, NULL, g_bottom + theme(panel.border = element_rect(colour = "black")),
          align = "hv",
          nrow = 3,
          rel_heights = c(1, -0.2, 1))

changing the facet_wrap labels using labeller in ggplot2

I think the easiest way would be to change sch.id before plotting.

library(ggplot2)
ten$sch.id <- paste0("sch.id:", ten$sch.id)

ggplot(ten) + aes(ses, math) + 
  geom_point() +
  geom_smooth(method = "lm", se = FALSE) + 
  facet_wrap(~sch.id)

---

If you don't want to modify your data and want to use the labeller argument you can create a named vector and use it in labeller.

cust_label <- setNames(paste0("sch.id:", unique(ten$sch.id)), unique(ten$sch.id))

ggplot(ten) + aes(ses, math) + 
  geom_point() +
  geom_smooth(method = "lm", se = FALSE) + 
  facet_wrap(~sch.id, labeller = as_labeller(cust_label))

How to remove the comma in facet labels when .multi_line = FALSE

mpg$label <- paste(mpg$cyl, mpg$drv)

ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy)) +
      geom_point() +
      facet_wrap(~label)

Remove Only One of Two facet_grid() X Labels

For reasons I also don't understand, the following seems to work. The function just returns a vector of empty strings of equal length as the input.

library(ggplot2)

ggplot(mtcars, aes(x=cyl,y=mpg)) +
  geom_point() +
  facet_grid(am ~ gear + carb, 
             labeller = labeller(carb = function(x) {rep("", length(x))}))

^{Created on 2021-01-12 by the reprex package (v0.3.0)}

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