How to make only x-axis invisible (y-axis stays visible)?

I have two axes (top, bottom) in a GUI. I do not want the x-axis of the top ghraph to be present (because it is the same as the bottom x-axis). I could not find how to handle separately the x and y axis visibility.

Csaba

Answer 1

[Wayne King]

without seeing your code, a simple way is just to set the 'xtick' property to []

plot(randn(100,1));
set(gca,'xtick',[])

[Csaba]

Thanks.

It is almost good. I still have the axis itself (ticks and labels have disappeared).

Csaba

[Wayne King]

Does this get closer?

 subplot(211)
 plot(randn(100,1))
 set(gca,'xtick',[]);
 set(gca,'xcolor',[1 1 1])
 subplot(212)
 plot(randn(100,1))

[Csaba]

Sorry, no. It makes the axis white but I have a picture behind the graph. So white axis (and actually any colors) are visible in my case. I do not want the x-axis at all.

Csaba

Answer 2

[Muhammad Shah]

This Question is posted in 2013, but still last week got more than a thousand views, and I also needed this info, and I got very helpful information in this post, but surprizingly later I got an other solution in Matlab documentation and that was not yet here, and it is probably the smalest code, and I tested it and it worked nice, so I decided to addd it, here it is:

axis off ; 

And thats it your axes are gone.

[Csaba]

Dear Muhammad,

First, this solution was already published (see above).

Second, in 2013 this command did not exist.

[Luca Nagel]

Dear Muhammad, thank you this was really helpful!

Answer 3

[Johann Riemensberger]

Hi, axes('Color','none','XColor','none');

works for me Bests Johann

[Katherine Latimer]

Wow after all that...thanks Johann!

[Csaba]

It does not work on the Matlab 2013. So I cannot accept this answer.

Answer 4

[Jorge Mariscal Harana]

Hi,

Try:

ax1.YAxis.Visible = 'off'; % remove y-axis
ax1.XAxis.Visible = 'off'; % remove x-axis

Hope that helps, J

[Walter Roberson]

Note: this uses syntax and properties available from R2014b, and so cannot could not have been used in the 2013 time-frame the question was originally asked for.

[Ankit Labh]

How about removing only one y axis (say right side) and not both?

Thanks

[Florens Helfferich]

@Ankit Labh ax1.Box = false;

This removes both the top and right side axes, but not the left and bottom axes.

Answer 5

[Kyle Henderson]

xticks([])

Answer 6

[Rini Varghese]

Try the following:

h = gca;
h.XAxis.Visible = 'off';

[Cg Gc]

This works great. Thank you.

[Abdul Basith Ashraf]

This is better

If I set

set(gca,'xtick',[])

the grid will also vanish.

But with your code, the grid stays . Thanks

Answer 7

[John Barber]

This solution might be overkill, but you can get that effect with my File Exchange program 'oaxes', available here: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/30018. The following will show only a y axis at the left edge of the plot:

oa = oaxes;
oa.XAxisLine = 'off';
oa.XLabel = '';
oa.YLabel = '';
oa.Arrow = 'off';
oa.Origin = [-Inf -Inf 0];

% If you want the normal y label to be visible:
ylabel('my y axis...')
set(get(gca,'YLabel'),'visible','on')

This should get you close to what you are looking for. The oaxes documentation will give you more information about the properties used in the example above, including an explanation of the difference between the oaxes 'YLabel' property which is set to empty above, and the parent axes' 'YLabel' text object. The main difference in appearance I am getting is that the oaxes ticks are bidirectional (they extend out on both sides from the axes line), while a normal axes has ticks that only extend to one side. Currently, there is no way to change this in oaxes, but I might add it in a future release.

-John

[Csaba]

Thanks, I will try.

Csaba

Answer 8

[José-Luis]

h = axes;
plot(h,rand(10,1));
pos = get(h,'Position');
new_h = axes('Position',pos);
linkaxes([h new_h],'y');
pos(3) = eps; %Edited here
set(new_h,'Position',pos,'XTick',[],'XTickLabel',[]);
set(h,'Visible','off');

[Csaba]

Thanks. I tried a similar code before (making the line width zero). Running your code I get the following error:

************************************************************

Error using set

Width and height must be > 0

Error in prrrr_1 (line 8)

set(new_h,'Position',pos,'XTick',[],'XTickLabel',[]);

********************************************************

So the pos(3)=0; command makes the width zero which MATLAB does not accepts.

Csaba

[José-Luis]

My bad, please see the edited code where the width is made very small instead of zero. This would be sort of a kludge.

[Csaba]

Yes, it works, although it is a workaround and not a solution.

[Jan]

[EDITED, moved from flag] andreas jensen wrote:

Overly complicated and doesn't work

Answer 9

[Chintan]

Turn Box off, it usually works.

Answer 10

[Martin]

I solved something similar that way:

set(axis_h,'XColor',axis_h.Parent.Color);

-Martin

Answer 11

[Steven Lord]

This wasn't an option when the question was originally asked, but now you can change the Visible property of the appropriate ruler object that is part of the axes. Compare the axes without the ruler being changed:

ax = axes;
plot(ax, 1:10);

with one that does have the ruler turned off.

figure
ax2 = axes;
plot(ax2, 1:10);
% Get the ruler for the X axis
x = ax2.XAxis;
% Make it invisible
x.Visible = 'off';

[Simon]

That still doesn't answer the original question. The question was, could he remove the top axis only and keep the bottom axis. No one has answered this successfully