ggguides

rearranging the legends on a ggplot

ggguides places, styles and combines the legends of ggplot2 plots with named functions, such as legend_left(), legend_inside() or legend_style(), each added to a plot with +.

Each function sets the ggplot2 theme and guide options that belong to one change together, for a legend on the left its position, its justification and the alignment of the legend boxes, and returns an ordinary ggplot2 component that combines with the rest of the plot’s theme. For layouts of several plots, collect_legends() and shared_legend() edit the gtable, the table of graphical objects that ggplot2 draws, so that one legend remains. You choose where each legend goes and how it looks, one aesthetic at a time when a plot has several. ggguides supports:

• Placement. legend_left(), legend_right(), legend_top() and legend_bottom() move the legend to a side, legend_inside() into a corner or to x/y coordinates, and legend_none() removes it.
• Styling. legend_style() sets size, font, background, border and margins. legend_wrap() arranges the keys in columns or rows, legend_reverse() and legend_order() set the order of the entries, and colorbar_style() styles continuous scales.
• Several legends on one plot. The by argument of every placement and style function targets one aesthetic. legend_hide() and legend_select() drop or keep legends by aesthetic, and legend_order_guides() sets their order.
• One legend for several plots. collect_legends() and collect_axes() remove duplicates from a patchwork layout, shared_legend() arranges plots with one legend without patchwork, and get_legend() extracts a legend for cowplot or grid.

Installation

install.packages("ggguides")

Development version:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("gcol33/ggguides")

Usage

1. Build the plot with ggplot2.
2. Add a placement function such as legend_left() or legend_inside().
3. Add legend_style() to change how the legend looks.

library(ggplot2)
library(ggguides)

p <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, wt, colour = factor(cyl))) +
  geom_point(size = 3)
p + legend_left()

Inside the panel, a corner is named with position, and the style is added as a further layer:

p +
  legend_inside(position = "topright") +
  legend_style(size = 18, title_face = "bold")

Compared with theme()

In ggplot2, a legend on the left with its keys aligned at the top takes three theme() arguments. legend_left() sets them together:

p + theme(legend.position = "left",
          legend.justification.left = "top",
          legend.box.just = "left")

p + legend_left(justification = "top")

Several legends on one plot

A plot with several aesthetics has one legend per aesthetic. The by argument places or styles one of them and leaves the others as they are:

q <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, wt, colour = factor(cyl), size = hp)) +
  geom_point()
q + legend_top(by = "colour") + legend_right(by = "size")

Calls with by add up, one line per legend and setting. Multiple Legends builds this plot with six legends, two on top, two on the right, one at the bottom and one on the left:

One legend for several plots

A patchwork layout repeats the legend of each plot. collect_legends() keeps one, and span = TRUE stretches it along the full height of stacked plots:

library(patchwork)

p1 <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, wt, colour = factor(cyl))) + geom_point()
p2 <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, hp, colour = factor(cyl))) + geom_point()
p3 <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, disp, colour = factor(cyl))) + geom_point()
stacked <- (p1 / p2 / p3) + plot_layout(heights = c(2, 1.5, 1))

gt <- collect_legends(stacked, position = "right", span = TRUE)
grid::grid.draw(gt)

With span = 1:2 the legend sits beside rows 1 and 2 only. Without patchwork, shared_legend(p1, p2, p3, ncol = 1, position = "bottom") arranges the plots with one legend. Patchwork Integration covers both, along with collected axes and cowplot.

Documentation

Start with Getting Started with ggguides: placing, styling and wrapping a legend, and combining the functions on one plot.

• Legend Positioning: the four sides, positions inside the panel, direction and removing the legend.
• Styling & Customization: fonts, text rotation, backgrounds, borders, key size, wrapping, entry order and colour bars.
• Multiple Legends: hiding, selecting, ordering, merging and placing legends per aesthetic.
• Patchwork Integration: one legend and shared axes across a layout of plots.
• Full reference: every function, grouped by job.

Getting help

Questions and bug reports go to the GitHub issues. A bug report is easiest to act on with a small reproducible example, for instance made with reprex.

Support

“Software is like sex: it’s better when it’s free.” — Linus Torvalds

I’m a PhD student who builds R packages in my free time because I believe good tools should be free and open. I started these projects for my own work and figured others might find them useful too.

If this package saved you some time, buying me a coffee is a nice way to say thanks. It helps with my coffee addiction.

Acknowledgements

ggguides sets options of ggplot2 and edits the plots it draws with gtable; multi-plot layouts come from patchwork.

License

ggguides is licensed under MIT.

Citation

Colling G (2026). _ggguides: Simplified Legend and Guide Alignment for
ggplot2_. doi:10.32614/CRAN.package.ggguides
<https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.ggguides>. R package version
1.1.10, <https://gillescolling.com/ggguides/>.

BibTeX:

@Manual{colling2026ggguides,
  title = {ggguides: Simplified Legend and Guide Alignment for ggplot2},
  author = {Gilles Colling},
  year = {2026},
  note = {R package version 1.1.10},
  doi = {10.32614/CRAN.package.ggguides},
  url = {https://gillescolling.com/ggguides/},
}

Download the citation as BibTeX or RIS.