CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rggplot2
tjebo
tjebo

Reputation: 23807

change order of legends for multiple aesthetics

Another "legend - question".

I have several aesthetics and wish to specify the order in which the legends for each aesthetic are drawn. Most threads are about changing the order of the items within an aesthetic, but that's not my problem. In my example, I would like to specify the location of the fill legend. Funnily, the color legend is drawn on top of the fill legend, but "right" to the fill legend, when drawing the legend on the bottom. That seems somewhat random to left to right readers like me who also rather read from the top to the bottom.

The graph is obviously somewhat random and was just quickly made for reprex purpose. 

library(ggplot2)

ggplot(mtcars) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(cyl, hp, fill = as.character(gear))) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(cyl, disp, color = as.character(cyl))) +
  labs(fill = 'fill', color = 'color')

# here I would like the fill legend to be *above* the color legend


ggplot(mtcars) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(cyl, hp, fill = as.character(gear))) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(cyl, disp, color = as.character(cyl))) +
  labs(fill = 'fill', color = 'color') +
  theme(legend.position = 'bottom')

# here I would like the fill legend to be *right* and the color legend left

Created on 2018-12-10 by the reprex package (v0.2.1)

Upvotes: 4

Views: 1529

Answers (1)

Martin Schmelzer
Martin Schmelzer

Reputation: 23919

You can use the order option of guide_legend:

ggplot(mtcars) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(cyl, hp, fill = as.character(gear))) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(cyl, disp, color = as.character(cyl))) +
  labs(fill = 'fill', color = 'color') +
  guides(fill  = guide_legend(order = 1),
         color = guide_legend(order = 2))

enter image description here

Upvotes: 12

Related Questions