# How to automatically choose legend location in Makie?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-automatically-choose-legend-location-in-makie/136105>\
**Category:** Visualization\
**Tags:** plotting, makie\
**Created:** [March 9, 2026, 8:05pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-automatically-choose-legend-location-in-makie/136105 "2026-03-09T20:05:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Abhro](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/abhro/32/220753_2.png) [@Abhro](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Abhro)\
**Post date:** [March 9, 2026, 8:05pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-automatically-choose-legend-location-in-makie/136105/1 "2026-03-09T20:05:01Z")

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When I plot a series with Makie and label it, how do I get `axislegend` to _ **automatically** _ pick the empty part of the axis to place the legend in to? Example: (don’t worry about the data source lol)

Best explored in a Julia REPL or an interactive session

```julia
using CairoMakie

x = [
    0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3,
    3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, 4.9, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, 5.9, 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3,
    6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.7, 6.8, 6.9, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, 7.9, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7, 8.8, 8.9, 9.0, 9.1,
]

y = [
    NaN, 0.0429089737491369, 0.10264903115083439, 0.0947777814294252, 0.0338277977476063, 0.03174121198969, 0.03635105144486207, 0.03978537080576214, 0.04046699021588537, 0.0412114876081603, 0.04319992729537861, 0.047075466839262954, 0.05131356002183631, 0.054075421907765195, 0.05494064442696345, 0.05522113901611183,
    0.0545425783674207, 0.053337326355401504, 0.053955238010355705, 0.05361125520368727, 0.053835496133942236, 0.05355467706356569, 0.05420182434727196, 0.054824149894319114, 0.05561180236049295, 0.05604520368951108, 0.05696506714638169, 0.05777955130155306, 0.058152676029887364, 0.05830765126032878, 0.05807693543178287,
    0.057956142242877214, 0.058417102692983953, 0.05941577009935072, 0.06213862703222151, 0.06394819091335811, 0.06430757550020112, 0.06396330812044938, 0.06364797247277251, 0.06444432433951856, 0.06612602361444533, 0.06674719965040146, 0.06663497415958049, 0.06651114762672354, 0.0677709835257091, 0.06910617890411844,
    0.06916322518500292, 0.06858061917815957, 0.06887476660829213, 0.07034755694303292, 0.07160496055559556, 0.0719943878296249, 0.07251013980137015, 0.07316880248230188, 0.07535219914259361, 0.07895575424150675, 0.08190481515216726, 0.0841501909525944, 0.087111284064865, 0.09262652606093782, 0.10198570164602906,
    0.11407621031241988, 0.12787899039271325, 0.1395963748046922, 0.15027238139221732, 0.16861242635799975, 0.19141131550878965, 0.22991581881877568, 0.26987775088184257, 0.3989823619456098, 0.5173832829870192, 0.7014131365240662, 0.730236402997345, 0.7637231954332452, 0.9406621308584271, 1.0269919264161609,
    1.205219232605864, 2.132652139555734, 2.231610024175371, NaN, NaN, NaN, NaN, NaN, NaN, NaN, NaN, NaN,
]

fig, ax, _ = lines(x, y, label = "data")
axislegend(framevisible = false) # problem better shown with framevisible = false
fig

fig, ax, _ = lines(x, y, label = "data", axis = (; yscale = log10))
axislegend(framevisible = false) # problem better shown with framevisible = false
fig

```

For the two figures, Makie places the legend box in the top-right, where if I hadn’t specified `framevisible`, it would have obscured the last few points. I know I can pass in `position = :ct` or something to that effect, but how do I get Makie to figure out where to place the legend (still inside the axis)? This is especially necessary when different plots take up different corners of the axis.

I’m attaching the two plots I got from the above example where we can clearly see the plot and the legend overlapping

 ![mwe-log-display](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/5/f/5fb4ada8368631a4149e08932e8380d820e4f21f.png)  
 ![mwe-linear-display](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/8/a/8a73eb5beca48f37e8441e0453058d144855312d.png)

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**Author:** ![asinghvi17](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/asinghvi17/32/8272_2.png) [@asinghvi17](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/asinghvi17)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2026, 3:52am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-automatically-choose-legend-location-in-makie/136105/2 "2026-03-10T03:52:19Z")

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Hmm, I don’t think we have auto legend placement yet but it sounds like something we should add. The main effort is probably in determining which areas of the plot are “filled” since it’s pointless to take the bounding box of each plot.

My first inclination is that one could perform some form of “rasterization” for each plot onto a coarse grid, then find an area on that grid that is relatively empty. Not sure how other libraries do it though so there might be something to learn from there.

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**Author:** ![joa-quim](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/joa-quim/32/227_2.png) [@joa-quim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/joa-quim)\
**Post date:** [March 12, 2026, 5:26pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-automatically-choose-legend-location-in-makie/136105/3 "2026-03-12T17:26:53Z")

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Ask Claude to do it for you. I did that for GMT and it told me that `mapplotlib` has that for the option `loc='best'`. It works fine. Made a couple of cleanings and and it now _only_ adds 100 kB to the cache (before it added 0.5 MB)

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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:** [March 12, 2026, 6:54pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-automatically-choose-legend-location-in-makie/136105/4 "2026-03-12T18:54:01Z")

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Here is how Plots does it:

> <https://github.com/JuliaPlots/Plots.jl/blob/6df02e64ff646f1824528ac9f3482d186fcb3179/PlotsBase/src/utils.jl#L895>

Basically it sums a penalty for data in each quadrant where the legend might be placed.

It works relatively well:

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/b/f/bfc1950c33689de0f9eec868bebf66697cb237da.png)

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**Author:** ![joa-quim](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/joa-quim/32/227_2.png) [@joa-quim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/joa-quim)\
**Post date:** [March 12, 2026, 8:01pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-automatically-choose-legend-location-in-makie/136105/5 "2026-03-12T20:01:04Z")

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Claude’s creation does this

> <https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/GMT.jl/blob/master/src/legend_funs.jl#L298>

```julia-auto
plot(mat2ds([[0. 0; 1 1], [1.0 0; 0 1]]), legend=(label="colnames", pos=:auto), show=true)

```

 ![GMTjl_j](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/6/6/66318019ad74e195348726225c4d81afabd7e15f.png)

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**Author:** ![Abhro](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/abhro/32/220753_2.png) [@Abhro](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Abhro)\
**Post date:** [March 13, 2026, 1:23pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-automatically-choose-legend-location-in-makie/136105/6 "2026-03-13T13:23:58Z")

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There is now an associated issue on the Makie.jl repository at #5554: [Automatic legend placement by `axislegend()` · Issue #5554 · MakieOrg/Makie.jl · GitHub](https://github.com/MakieOrg/Makie.jl/issues/5554)