# Blank plots in Julia 1.6+ and GR 0.57.4

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/blank-plots-in-julia-1-6-and-gr-0-57-4/59993>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** plots\
**Created:** [April 25, 2021, 2:47pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/blank-plots-in-julia-1-6-and-gr-0-57-4/59993 "2021-04-25T14:47:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![lmiq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/lmiq/32/18314_2.png) [@lmiq](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/lmiq)\
**Post date:** [April 25, 2021, 2:47pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/blank-plots-in-julia-1-6-and-gr-0-57-4/59993/1 "2021-04-25T14:47:13Z")

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I am getting completely blank plots since I updated Plots to 1.12 in Julia 1.6. I also installed 1.6.1 and added Plots, with the same result:

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/c/5/c579a5df61d73cdd242a095b20177febfdba9b95.png)

The output of `]st` is below, in any case. Anyone has any idea of what can be going wrong? Posted an issue [here](https://github.com/jheinen/GR.jl/issues/400).

> **st**
>
> ```julia
> (@v1.6) pkg> st
> Status `~/.julia/environments/v1.6/Project.toml`
> [6e4b80f9] BenchmarkTools v0.7.0
> [336ed68f] CSV v0.8.4
> [b630d9fa] CheapThreads v0.2.3
> [46823bd8] Chemfiles v0.9.3
> [35d6a980] ColorSchemes v3.12.0
> [6f35c628] ComplexMixtures v0.4.3
> [a93c6f00] DataFrames v1.0.1
> [e30172f5] Documenter v0.26.3
> [35a29f4d] DocumenterTools v0.1.10
> [fde71243] EasyFit v0.5.4
> [7a1cc6ca] FFTW v1.4.0
> [cc61a311] FLoops v0.1.10
> [59287772] Formatting v0.4.2
> [c58ffaec] FortranFiles v0.6.0
> [4c0ca9eb] Gtk v1.1.7
> [f67ccb44] HDF5 v0.15.4
> [7073ff75] IJulia v1.23.2
> [18364772] IPython v0.5.0
> [0f8b85d8] JSON3 v1.8.1
> [b964fa9f] LaTeXStrings v1.2.1
> [bdcacae8] LoopVectorization v0.12.12
> [33e6dc65] MKL v0.4.0
> [6741aa20] Neptune v0.14.0
> [6fd5a793] Octavian v0.2.13
> [429524aa] Optim v1.3.0
> [e29189f1] PDBTools v0.12.0
> [8314cec4] PGFPlotsX v1.2.10
> [d96e819e] Parameters v0.12.2
> [91a5bcdd] Plots v1.12.0
> [c3e4b0f8] Pluto v0.14.3
> [7f904dfe] PlutoUI v0.7.1
> [08abe8d2] PrettyTables v1.0.0
> [92933f4c] ProgressMeter v1.5.0
> [1fd47b50] QuadGK v2.4.1
> [295af30f] Revise v3.1.15
> [efcf1570] Setfield v0.7.0
> [f62ebe17] ShortCodes v0.3.2
> [aa65fe97] SnoopCompile v2.6.0
> [e2b509da] SnoopCompileCore v2.5.2
> [860ef19b] StableRNGs v1.0.0
> [90137ffa] StaticArrays v1.1.1
> [856f2bd8] StructTypes v1.7.2
> [0c5d862f] Symbolics v0.1.24
> [b189fb0b] ThreadPools v1.2.1
> [a759f4b9] TimerOutputs v0.5.8
> [bc48ee85] Tullio v0.2.14
> [1986cc42] Unitful v1.7.0
> [33b4df10] VectorizedRNG v0.2.8
> [9fa8497b] Future
> [de0858da] Printf
> 
> ```

edit: the problem is with GR (with pyplot the plot appears). GR is in its latest version (0.57.4) and I have ran `build GR` again already.

---

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**Author:** ![rafael.guerra](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rafael.guerra/32/216610_2.png) [@rafael.guerra](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rafael.guerra)\
**Post date:** [April 25, 2021, 4:45pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/blank-plots-in-julia-1-6-and-gr-0-57-4/59993/2 "2021-04-25T16:45:28Z")

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No problems on Win10 Julia 1.6.1, with Plots v1.12.0 gr back-end.  
The plot below is not blank:

```julia
using Plots;gr()
plot(rand(10),rand(10))

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lmiq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/lmiq/32/18314_2.png) [@lmiq](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/lmiq)\
**Post date:** [April 26, 2021, 5:40pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/blank-plots-in-julia-1-6-and-gr-0-57-4/59993/3 "2021-04-26T17:40:18Z")

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I updated my Linux distribution, restarted, and plots appear again. 🤷‍♂️

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**Author:** ![aramirezreyes](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/aramirezreyes/32/42573_2.png) [@aramirezreyes](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/aramirezreyes)\
**Post date:** [April 26, 2021, 6:26pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/blank-plots-in-julia-1-6-and-gr-0-57-4/59993/4 "2021-04-26T18:26:52Z")

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I’m happy for you, but it sounds kind of annoying that you need to mess with the OS to get GR to work.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lmiq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/lmiq/32/18314_2.png) [@lmiq](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/lmiq)\
**Post date:** [April 26, 2021, 9:18pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/blank-plots-in-julia-1-6-and-gr-0-57-4/59993/5 "2021-04-26T21:18:03Z")

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I am not sure what it was. When I said that I updated I mean I did a package update and restarted. Not a reinstall. It might be only some issue with the running session after some upgrade. We’ll never know.

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**Author:** ![rafael.guerra](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rafael.guerra/32/216610_2.png) [@rafael.guerra](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rafael.guerra)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2023, 10:45am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/blank-plots-in-julia-1-6-and-gr-0-57-4/59993/6 "2023-01-17T10:45:42Z")

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Fyi, I have just encountered similar empty plots (gr backend of Plots) in Win 11, and couldn’t solve the problem.

Then I noticed that my GKS QtTerm window title had a large number in parentheses (and I see 29 in your snapshot).

The solution was to run Windows Task Manager and kill the `gksqt.exe` task which was running in the background. After that, the new plots display fine.

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**Author:** ![paulmelis](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/paulmelis/32/35063_2.png) [@paulmelis](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/paulmelis)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2024, 8:16pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/blank-plots-in-julia-1-6-and-gr-0-57-4/59993/7 "2024-04-29T20:16:56Z")

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> [@rafael.guerra](#):
>
> The solution was to run Windows Task Manager and kill the `gksqt.exe` task which was running in the background. After that, the new plots display fine.

Late reply, but **thank you**. That’s exactly the hint I needed to get non-empty plots again on Linux with 1.10.2. Tried all the usual stuff, plotting directly with GR worked, `savefig()` worked, clearing `~/.julia` did not make any difference, etc.

Killing `gksqt` did the trick… What the heck is that process supposed to do anyway?

Edit: wait, is `gksqt` a separate display process that stays around even if you close the window? And is `(17)` (in my case) the number of replots?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mkitti](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mkitti/32/12459_2.png) [@mkitti](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mkitti)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2024, 10:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/blank-plots-in-julia-1-6-and-gr-0-57-4/59993/8 "2024-04-29T22:09:53Z")

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> [@paulmelis](#):
>
> Edit: wait, is `gksqt` a separate display process that stays around even if you close the window? And is `(17)` (in my case) the number of replots?

This goes to the structure of GR: [GitHub - sciapp/gr: GR framework: a graphics library for visualisation applications](https://github.com/sciapp/gr)

GKS stands for Graphical Kernel System. QT refers to the [QT graphical framework](https://www.qt.io/product/framework).

GKS QT is program that serves as an adapter between GKS and QT.

> **[gr/lib/gks/qt at master · sciapp/gr](https://github.com/sciapp/gr/tree/master/lib/gks/qt)**
>
> GR framework: a graphics library for visualisation applications - sciapp/gr

Basically this creates a QT application window and then listens to [port 8410](https://github.com/sciapp/gr/blob/9a2d15ddf0946274f9d662aaff857a7373b5ecd7/lib/gks/qt/gksserver.cxx#L21)

In principal, this should shut down when Julia shuts down, but there might be some circumstances when that cannot occur properly.