matplotlib.axes.Axes.margins

Axes.margins(*margins, x=None, y=None, tight=True)

Set or retrieve autoscaling margins.

The padding added to each limit of the axes is the margin times the data interval. All input parameters must be floats within the range [0, 1]. Passing both positional and keyword arguments is invalid and will raise a TypeError. If no arguments (positional or otherwise) are provided, the current margins will remain in place and simply be returned.

Specifying any margin changes only the autoscaling; for example, if xmargin is not None, then xmargin times the X data interval will be added to each end of that interval before it is used in autoscaling.

Parameters:

args : float, optional

If a single positional argument is provided, it specifies both margins of the x-axis and y-axis limits. If two positional arguments are provided, they will be interpreted as xmargin, ymargin. If setting the margin on a single axis is desired, use the keyword arguments described below.

x, y : float, optional

Specific margin values for the x-axis and y-axis, respectively. These cannot be used with positional arguments, but can be used individually to alter on e.g., only the y-axis.

tight : bool, default is True

The tight parameter is passed to autoscale_view(), which is executed after a margin is changed; the default here is True, on the assumption that when margins are specified, no additional padding to match tick marks is usually desired. Set tight to None will preserve the previous setting.

Returns:

xmargin, ymargin : float

Notes

If a previously used Axes method such as pcolor() has set use_sticky_edges to True, only the limits not set by the "sticky artists" will be modified. To force all of the margins to be set, set use_sticky_edges to False before calling margins().

Examples using matplotlib.axes.Axes.margins

Zooming in and out using Axes.margins and the subject of "stickiness"