# Makie Axis xticks: passing (datetimes, labels) fails with MethodError

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/makie-axis-xticks-passing-datetimes-labels-fails-with-methoderror/134411>\
**Category:** Visualization\
**Tags:** question, plotting, makie, datetime\
**Created:** [December 7, 2025, 2:08pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/makie-axis-xticks-passing-datetimes-labels-fails-with-methoderror/134411 "2025-12-07T14:08:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lfenzo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85e7bf/32.png) [@lfenzo](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/lfenzo)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2025, 2:08pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/makie-axis-xticks-passing-datetimes-labels-fails-with-methoderror/134411/1 "2025-12-07T14:08:32Z")

</div>

Hello!

I’m trying to change the `DateTime` xtick label intervals in my Makie plot by manually passing the `xticks` parameter to `Axis` as a tuple with two vectors: `(datetimes, labels)`. According to the [current `xticks` docs](https://docs.makie.org/stable/reference/blocks/axis.html#xticks):

> The following is a list of common tick objects.
> 
> Numeric:
> 
> - A vector of numbers
> - (…)
> 
> DateTime:
> 
> - A vector of `DateTime`s
> - A tuple with two vectors `(datetimes, labels)`
> - [`DateTimeTicks`](https://docs.makie.org/stable/api#Makie.DateTimeTicks), the default tick finder for datetime ticks

However, with this MWE

```julia
using CairoMakie
fig = Figure()
x = DateTime(2025, 1, 1):Day(1):DateTime(2025, 1, 10) 
ax = Axis(fig[1, 1], xticks=(x, string.(x)))
lines!(ax, x, rand(10))

```

I get:

```julia-auto
MethodError: Cannot `convert` an object of type DateTime to an object of type Float64
The function `convert` exists, but no method is defined for this combination of argument types.

Closest candidates are:
  convert(::Type{T}, ::IntervalArithmetic.ExactReal) where T<:Real
   @ IntervalArithmetic ~/.julia/packages/IntervalArithmetic/55mUT/src/intervals/exact_literals.jl:130
  convert(::Type{T}, ::Unitful.Quantity) where T<:Real
   @ Unitful ~/.julia/packages/Unitful/pKTDo/src/conversion.jl:167
  convert(::Type{T}, ::Unitful.Level) where T<:Real
   @ Unitful ~/.julia/packages/Unitful/pKTDo/src/logarithm.jl:46
  ...

```

Any idea of what I am missing here?

Thanks in advance!

* * *

> **Environment Packages**
>
> ```julia-auto
> [13f3f980] CairoMakie v0.15.8
> [a93c6f00] DataFrames v1.8.1
> [7073ff75] IJulia v1.33.0
> [945b72a4] MarketData v0.15.1
> 
> ```

> **Full Stacktrace**
>
> ```julia-auto
> MethodError: Cannot `convert` an object of type Date to an object of type Float64
> The function `convert` exists, but no method is defined for this combination of argument types.
> 
> Closest candidates are:
> convert(::Type{T}, ::IntervalArithmetic.ExactReal) where T<:Real
> @ IntervalArithmetic ~/.julia/packages/IntervalArithmetic/55mUT/src/intervals/exact_literals.jl:130
> convert(::Type{T}, ::Unitful.Quantity) where T<:Real
> @ Unitful ~/.julia/packages/Unitful/pKTDo/src/conversion.jl:167
> convert(::Type{T}, ::Unitful.Level) where T<:Real
> @ Unitful ~/.julia/packages/Unitful/pKTDo/src/logarithm.jl:46
> ...
> 
> Stacktrace:
> [1] setindex!
> @ ./genericmemory.jl:259 [inlined]
> [2] unsafe_copyto!(dest::Memory{Float64}, doffs::Int64, src::Memory{Date}, soffs::Int64, n::Int64)
> @ Base ./genericmemory.jl:158
> [3] unsafe_copyto!
> @ ./genericmemory.jl:137 [inlined]
> [4] _copyto_impl!
> @ ./array.jl:308 [inlined]
> [5] copyto!
> @ ./array.jl:294 [inlined]
> [6] copyto!
> @ ./array.jl:319 [inlined]
> [7] copyto_axcheck!
> @ ./abstractarray.jl:1176 [inlined]
> [8] Array
> @ ./array.jl:621 [inlined]
> [9] convert
> @ ./array.jl:614 [inlined]
> [10] get_tickvalues
> @ ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/makielayout/lineaxis.jl:678 [inlined]
> [11] get_tickvalues
> @ ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/makielayout/lineaxis.jl:610 [inlined]
> [12] get_ticks
> @ ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/makielayout/lineaxis.jl:598 [inlined]
> [13] get_ticks(::Nothing, ticks::Vector{Date}, scale::Function, formatter::Makie.Automatic, vmin::Float64, vmax::Float64)
> @ Makie ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/dim-converts/dim-converts.jl:77
> [14] (::Makie.var"#LineAxis##22#LineAxis##23"{Observable{Any}})(::Tuple{Float32, Tuple{Float32, Float32}, Bool}, ::Nothing, limits::Tuple{Float64, Float64}, ticks::Vector{Date}, tickformat::Makie.Automatic, scale::Function)
> @ Makie ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/makielayout/lineaxis.jl:449
> [15] (::Observables.MapCallback)(value::Any)
> @ Observables ~/.julia/packages/Observables/YdEbO/src/Observables.jl:436
> [16] #map!#298
> @ ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/scenes.jl:191 [inlined]
> [17] map!
> @ ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/scenes.jl:181 [inlined]
> [18] Makie.LineAxis(parent::Scene, attrs::Attributes)
> @ Makie ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/makielayout/lineaxis.jl:445
> [19] Makie.LineAxis(parent::Scene; kwargs...)
> @ Makie ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/makielayout/lineaxis.jl:8
> [20] LineAxis
> @ ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/makielayout/lineaxis.jl:6 [inlined]
> [21] initialize_block!(ax::Axis; palette::Nothing)
> @ Makie ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/makielayout/blocks/axis.jl:346
> [22] initialize_block!(ax::Axis)
> @ Makie ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/makielayout/blocks/axis.jl:154
> [23] _block(T::Type{Axis}, fig_or_scene::Figure, args::Vector{Any}, kwdict::Dict{Symbol, Any}, bbox::Nothing; kwdict_complete::Bool)
> @ Makie ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/makielayout/blocks.jl:405
> [24] _block
> @ ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/makielayout/blocks.jl:321 [inlined]
> [25] #_block#1538
> @ ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/makielayout/blocks.jl:266 [inlined]
> [26] _block(::Type{Axis}, ::GridPosition; kwargs::@Kwargs{xticks::Vector{Date}, yticks::UnitRange{Int64}, ylabel::String})
> @ Makie ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/makielayout/blocks.jl:260
> [27] _block
> @ ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/makielayout/blocks.jl:251 [inlined]
> [28] #_#1536
> @ ~/.julia/packages/Makie/Vn16E/src/makielayout/blocks.jl:242 [inlined]
> [29] top-level scope
> @ In[39]:8
> [30] eval(m::Module, e::Any)
> 
> ```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jules](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/41988e/32.png) [@jules](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jules)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2025, 3:33pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/makie-axis-xticks-passing-datetimes-labels-fails-with-methoderror/134411/2 "2025-12-07T15:33:17Z")

</div>

Yeah, the problem is that Makie tries to use the float axis tick logic on your tick object, because at this point it doesn’t yet know you’re trying to use a datetime axis. You could plot the lines first (then the Axis has changed to datetime mode) and then set the ticks.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![technocrat](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/technocrat/32/220947_2.png) [@technocrat](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/technocrat)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2025, 11:59pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/makie-axis-xticks-passing-datetimes-labels-fails-with-methoderror/134411/3 "2025-12-07T23:59:30Z")

</div>

When dealing with equal interval dates like this, a workaround is to space the ticks with integers and label them with strings converted from the date objects

```julia-auto
using CairoMakie
using Dates

# Date values only used to build labels
dates = DateTime(2025, 1, 1):Day(1):DateTime(2025, 1, 10)
labels = Dates.format.(dates, "yyyy-mm-dd")

x = 1:10
y = rand(10)

fig = Figure()
ax = Axis(fig[1, 1])

# ticks are numeric, labels are strings
ax.xticks[] = (collect(x), labels)
ax.xticklabelrotation[] = pi/4 # 45 degrees

lines!(ax, x, y)

fig

```

 ![CleanShot 2025-12-07 at 15.59.06@2x](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/e/8/e830b2252f1a6c59c53e8d713878950d2f943739.png)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![briochemc](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/briochemc/32/4209_2.png) [@briochemc](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/briochemc)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2025, 3:27am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/makie-axis-xticks-passing-datetimes-labels-fails-with-methoderror/134411/4 "2025-12-08T03:27:21Z")

</div>

In case it was not clear, I believe what @jules meant is that you can do

```julia
using CairoMakie
using Dates
fig = Figure()
x = DateTime(2025, 1, 1):Day(1):DateTime(2025, 1, 10) 
ax, plt = lines(fig[1, 1], x, rand(10); axis = (; xticks = x, xticklabelrotation = π/4))

```

which gives

 ![discourse_makie_date_xticks](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/7/f/7f1411aab5f0d1057110442f1e9a5ead1d32a05f.svg)

ℹ **Note:** This has only started working two weeks ago (2025-11-22, with Makie [v0.24.7](https://github.com/MakieOrg/Makie.jl/releases/tag/v0.24.7)).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lfenzo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85e7bf/32.png) [@lfenzo](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/lfenzo)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2025, 12:02pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/makie-axis-xticks-passing-datetimes-labels-fails-with-methoderror/134411/5 "2025-12-08T12:02:26Z")

</div>

> [@jules](#):
>
> Makie tries to use the float axis tick logic on your tick object, because at this point it doesn’t yet know you’re trying to use a datetime axis. You could plot the lines first (then the Axis has changed to datetime mode) and then set the ticks.

Yeah, that is a bit non-intuitive, but it did the trick. I wonder if this behavior should be documented, though. I’m marking this as resolved, thanks @jules, @technocrat, and @briochemc!