# PGFPlotsX remove legend box (border)
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pgfplotsx-remove-legend-box-border/44992
**Category:** Visualization
**Tags:** plotting, pgfplotsx
**Created:** [August 15, 2020, 1:41pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pgfplotsx-remove-legend-box-border/44992 "2020-08-15T13:41:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@AAL](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/AAL)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2020, 1:41pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pgfplotsx-remove-legend-box-border/44992/1 "2020-08-15T13:41:03Z")
Hi,
I am trying to remove the legend box in a plot with the pgfplotsx backend and I cannot find the right attribute. I know I can easily remove the box in the generated tex file (see [here](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/7011/removing-legend-box-border-in-pgfplots)) but I would like to be able to do it directly in julia to avoid any manual changes if I have to rebuild the figure. I have found that I can change the color of the border with the foreground\_color\_legend attribute but that also changes the color of the text, which cannot be overwritten with the legendfontcolor attribute:
```julia
plot(0:0.1:1,0:0.1:1,foreground_color_legend=:white,legendfontcolor=:black)
```
gives me a figure with white border but also with white font. Ideally the border is not drawn at all. Any ideas how I can remove the box?
---
### Author:  [@VivMendes](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/VivMendes)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2021, 10:42am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pgfplotsx-remove-legend-box-border/44992/2 "2021-06-13T10:42:29Z")
Hi @AAL . Using Plots and the pgfplotsx() backend, the trick is done by inserting `fg_legend = :transparent` into the plot function’s properties, like this
```julia
using Plots
using LaTeXStrings # edditing with Latex
pgfplotsx() # pgfplotsx() backend
#gr()
f(x) = -2 + 10sin(x)
g(x) = -2 + 3x
q(x) = -10+x^2
plot(
[f, g, q],
-5:0.01:5,
label=[L"f(x)" L"g(x)" L"q(x)"],
title = L"My \; Figure",
xlabel = L"Peanuts",
ylabel = L"\alpha (m/s)",
fg_legend = :transparent # the line edges of the legend box disappear
)
```
The plot will look like this:
If you do it directly using PGFPlotsX, the trick is to insert `legend_style= "{draw=none}"` into the `Axis` properties, like this (sorry for raw LaTeX code at the top of the code, but it does not interfere in any way with what you want; it is intended to change the default layout of the plots in PGFPlotsX):
```julia
using PGFPlotsX
using LaTeXStrings
push!(PGFPlotsX.CUSTOM_PREAMBLE,
raw"\pgfplotsset{tick label style = {font = {\fontsize{12 pt}{12 pt}\selectfont}},
label style = {font = {\fontsize{12 pt}{12 pt}\selectfont}},
legend style = {font = {\fontsize{12 pt}{12 pt}\selectfont}},
}"
)
@pgf a = Axis({
no_marks,
legend_pos = "north west",
legend_style= "{draw=none}", # To avoid the boxed legend style
height = "10cm",
width = "20cm",
grid = "major",
xlabel = L"\textbf{Date}",
ylabel = L" \color{blue} CPI \ (\% change) \ , \ \color{red} FFR \ (\%)",
x_tick_label_style="{/pgf/number format/1000 sep=}", # To avoid commas in the thousands
ytick_distance ="5", # set the distance betwen each tick
title = L"\textbf{Consumer Price Index and Federal Funds Rate (US: 1960:M1---2020:M6)}",
xmax = 2022,
xmin = 1958,
ymax = 20,
ymin = -5,
},
Plot(Table([Years, CPI]),
{
color = "blue",
style = "{thick}"
}),
LegendEntry(L"CPI"),
Plot(Table([Years, FFR]),
{
color = "red",
style = "{thick}"
}),
LegendEntry(L"FFR"),
)
#pgfsave("PGFPlotsX_TimeSeries.pdf", a) #save plot as a pdf
```
The plot would look like this (sorry, you can not replicate the figure as you don’t have the data):
---
### Author:  [@gustaphe](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/gustaphe)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2021, 1:15pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pgfplotsx-remove-legend-box-border/44992/3 "2021-06-13T13:15:04Z")
Just a TeX nitpick: `\( My \; Figure \)` is wrong. If you have to be in math mode, go for `\( \textrm{My Figure} \)`. There is really no reason for that title to be a LaTeXString to begin with. If your issue is that the font difference looks bad in the other backends, you are looking for `default(fontfamily="Computer Modern")`.
(This goes the same for `Peanuts`)
---
### Author:  [@VivMendes](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/VivMendes)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2021, 2:36pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pgfplotsx-remove-legend-box-border/44992/4 "2021-06-13T14:36:14Z")
Hi @gustaphe, thank you. I know that titles do not necessarily need to use LaTeX, but sometimes they do because we may have to insert some mathematical symbol into it. That’s the reason I presented that strange type of title; the same for “Peanuts”. I tried to use your LaTeX proposal in Plots, but it does not work.
But this is not the main point here. I thought I was helping someone that had just arrived at the Julia world. @AAL did have a very usual and ordinary doubt about plotting (a pretty common thing in computation), but nobody did bother to help … for ten months. Yes, @AAL had posted this issue ten months ago. I just saw his /her issue because I had raised another issue a few days ago (related to PlotlyJS) and saw this issue at the top of the list. There must be something odd here because someone has a basic doubt about Plots, and nobody helps.
---
### Author:  [@rafael.guerra](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rafael.guerra)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2021, 2:51pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pgfplotsx-remove-legend-box-border/44992/5 "2021-06-13T14:51:11Z")
Within Plots.jl, the `fg_legend=nothing` argument does remove the legend box for all back-ends but `unicodeplots` (according to [this list](https://docs.juliaplots.org/latest/generated/supported/)).
---
### Author:  [@VivMendes](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/VivMendes)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2021, 3:08pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pgfplotsx-remove-legend-box-border/44992/6 "2021-06-13T15:08:02Z")
@rafael.guerra , thanks. I had a typo in my first answer. In Plots, `fg_legend = :transparent` does the trick; in PGPlotsX it is `legend_style= "{draw=none}"`. The two sets of code I presented above are correct, but in the introduction to the first one I had mentioned `legend_style= "{draw=none}"` and it should be `fg_legend = :transparent`. Correction done.
---
### Author:  [@AAL](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/AAL)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2021, 1:43pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pgfplotsx-remove-legend-box-border/44992/7 "2021-06-15T13:43:55Z")
Thank you all for the answers. This is really helpful. I have used julia for a while to make my plots and as a workaround I was modifying the .tex files generated.
In the meantime I also wanted to make the legend box transparent. I am using `fg_legend=:transparent` and `bg_legend=:transparent`, which is exactly what I wanted. Just wanted to add this in case anybody lands here looking for the same behavior.
I could not find the `fg_legend` attribute in the Plots.jl documentation, including the list referenced by @rafael.guerra. Is there a more exhaustive documentation that I am missing?
---
### Author:  [@gustaphe](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/gustaphe)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2021, 1:59pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pgfplotsx-remove-legend-box-border/44992/8 "2021-06-15T13:59:49Z")
> [@AAL](#):
>
> I could not find the `fg_legend` attribute in the Plots.jl documentation,
That’s a shorthand for `foreground_color_legend`. In general the proper name of the keywords are not abbreviated.
---
### Author:  [@rafael.guerra](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rafael.guerra)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2021, 2:12pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/pgfplotsx-remove-legend-box-border/44992/9 "2021-06-15T14:12:44Z")
@AAL, look no further than [here](https://docs.juliaplots.org/latest/generated/attributes_subplot/).