# Is it posible to serialize a Makie.Figure object?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-it-posible-to-serialize-a-makie-figure-object/134686>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** makie, serialization\
**Created:** [December 22, 2025, 10:59am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-it-posible-to-serialize-a-makie-figure-object/134686 "2025-12-22T10:59:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Eben60](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/eben60/32/13475_2.png) [@Eben60](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Eben60)\
**Post date:** [December 22, 2025, 10:59am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-it-posible-to-serialize-a-makie-figure-object/134686/1 "2025-12-22T10:59:08Z")

</div>

I’ve tried with `JLD2` and `Serialization`. In`JLD2`, the warnings were, it can’t save anonymous functions, while `Serialization` errored with “cannot serialize a running Task”. So probably no chance?

[This is the context](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ann-casualplots-jl-a-simple-gui-for-easy-plotting-with-julia/133891/4).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Benny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/49beb7/32.png) [@Benny](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Benny)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2025, 3:34am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-it-posible-to-serialize-a-makie-figure-object/134686/2 "2025-12-23T03:34:17Z")

</div>

Never occurred to me and I won’t bother `dump`ing through a `Figure` to find the root causes, but it’s not surprising to run into this with complicated objects. Serialization in general is intended for simpler, well-contained objects and their composites, and it can’t be done safely or at all for others. It’s worth pointing out that `Serialization` also warns against storing anonymous functions long-term, especially across even minor code changes, so user inputs of anonymous functions is fundamentally a problem. If another way to save the necessary information to instantiate a `Figure`’s copy is developed, I’d expect some limitation on that front.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**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:** [December 24, 2025, 4:33am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-it-posible-to-serialize-a-makie-figure-object/134686/3 "2025-12-24T04:33:04Z")

</div>

Makie objects generally contain a lot of anonymous functions, so I wouldn’t expect them to serialize well.

Also, any serialization would break whenever any package that Makie depends on, or Makie itself, changes - which is fairly often!