ggrepel Usage Examples

Kamil Slowikowski

2016-10-19

ggrepel

Motivation

Some text labels overlap each other in plots created with geom_text:

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(mtcars) +
  geom_point(aes(wt, mpg), color = 'red') +
  geom_text(aes(wt, mpg, label = rownames(mtcars))) +
  theme_classic(base_size = 16)

plot of chunk geom_text

Algorithm

ggrepel implements functions to repel overlapping text labels away from each other and away from the data points that they label. The algorithm works as follows:

Usage Examples

geom_text_repel

We can repel the text labels away from each other by loading ggrepel and using geom_text_repel instead:

library(ggrepel)
set.seed(42)
ggplot(mtcars) +
  geom_point(aes(wt, mpg), color = 'red') +
  geom_text_repel(aes(wt, mpg, label = rownames(mtcars))) +
  theme_classic(base_size = 16)

plot of chunk geom_text_repel

geom_label_repel

geom_label_repel is based on geom_label.

set.seed(42)
ggplot(mtcars) +
  geom_point(aes(wt, mpg), size = 5, color = 'grey') +
  geom_label_repel(
    aes(wt, mpg, fill = factor(cyl), label = rownames(mtcars)),
    fontface = 'bold', color = 'white',
    box.padding = unit(0.35, "lines"),
    point.padding = unit(0.5, "lines")
  ) +
  theme_classic(base_size = 16)

plot of chunk geom_label_repel

Options

All options available for geom_text such as size, angle, family, fontface are also available for geom_text_repel.

However, the following parameters are not supported:

  • hjust
  • vjust
  • position
  • check_overlap

ggrepel provides additional parameters for geom_text_repel and geom_label_repel:

  • segment.color is the line segment color
  • segment.size is the line segment thickness
  • segment.alpha is the line segment transparency
  • box.padding is the padding surrounding the text bounding box
  • point.padding is the padding around the labeled point
  • arrow is the specification for arrow heads created by grid::arrow
  • force is the force of repulsion between overlapping text labels
  • max.iter is the maximum number of iterations to attempt to resolve overlaps
  • nudge_x is how much to shift the starting position of the text label along the x axis
  • nudge_y is how much to shift the starting position of the text label along the y axis

Here is an example that uses all of these options:

set.seed(42)
ggplot(mtcars) +
  geom_point(aes(wt, mpg, color = factor(cyl)), size = 3) +
  geom_text_repel(
    aes(
      wt, mpg,
      color = factor(cyl),
      label = rownames(mtcars),
      # Cars with 4 cylinders are rotated 90 degrees.
      angle = ifelse(mtcars$cyl == 4, 90, 0)
    ),
    size = 4,
    family = 'Times',
    fontface = 'bold',
    # Add extra padding around each text label.
    box.padding = unit(0.5, 'lines'),
    # Add extra padding around each data point.
    point.padding = unit(1.6, 'lines'),
    # Color of the line segments.
    segment.color = '#cccccc',
    # Width of the line segments.
    segment.size = 0.5,
    # Draw an arrow from the label to the data point.
    arrow = arrow(length = unit(0.01, 'npc')),
    # Strength of the repulsion force.
    force = 1,
    # Maximum iterations of the naive repulsion algorithm O(n^2).
    max.iter = 3e3,
    # Cars with 6 cylinders are nudged up and to the right.
    nudge_x = ifelse(mtcars$cyl == 6, 2, 0),
    nudge_y = ifelse(mtcars$cyl == 6, 9, 0)
  ) +
  scale_color_discrete(name = 'cyl') +
  scale_x_continuous(expand = c(0.5, 0)) +
  scale_y_continuous(expand = c(0.25, 0)) +
  theme_classic(base_size = 16)

plot of chunk geom_text_repel_options

Repel labels and ignore data points

Set point.padding = NA to exclude all data points from repulsion calculations.

set.seed(42)

mtcars$label <- rownames(mtcars)

ggplot(mtcars, aes(wt, mpg, label = label)) +
  geom_point(color = "red") +
  geom_text_repel(point.padding = NA) +
  theme_bw(base_size = 16)

plot of chunk geom_text_repel_point_padding_na

Hide some of the labels

Set some labels to the empty string "" to hide them. All data points will still repel the remaining labels.

set.seed(42)

mtcars$label <- rownames(mtcars)
mtcars$label[1:15] <- ""

ggplot(mtcars, aes(wt, mpg)) +
  geom_point(aes(color = factor(cyl)), size = 2) +
  geom_text_repel(
    aes(
      color = factor(cyl),
      size = hp,
      label = label
    ),
    point.padding = unit(0.25, "lines"),
    box.padding = unit(0.25, "lines"),
    nudge_y = 0.1
  ) +
  theme_bw(base_size = 16)

plot of chunk geom_text_repel_empty_string

Line plot

set.seed(42)
ggplot(Orange, aes(age, circumference, color = Tree)) +
  geom_line() +
  coord_cartesian(xlim = c(min(Orange$age), max(Orange$age) + 90)) +
  geom_text_repel(
    data = subset(Orange, age == max(age)),
    aes(label = paste("Tree", Tree)),
    size = 6,
    nudge_x = 45,
    segment.color = NA
  ) +
  theme_classic(base_size = 16) +
  theme(legend.position = "none") +
  labs(title = "Orange Trees", x = "Age (days)", y = "Circumference (mm)")

plot of chunk line_plot

Volcano plot

set.seed(42)

# Read Stephen Turner's data
genes <- read.table("genes.txt.bz2", header = TRUE)
genes$Significant <- ifelse(genes$padj < 0.05, "FDR < 0.05", "Not Sig")

ggplot(genes, aes(x = log2FoldChange, y = -log10(pvalue))) +
  geom_point(aes(color = Significant)) +
  scale_color_manual(values = c("red", "grey")) +
  theme_bw(base_size = 16) +
  geom_text_repel(
    data = subset(genes, padj < 0.05),
    aes(label = Gene),
    size = 5,
    box.padding = unit(0.35, "lines"),
    point.padding = unit(0.3, "lines")
  )

plot of chunk volcano

Animation

# This chunk of code will take a minute or two to run.
library(ggrepel)
library(animation)

plot_frame <- function(n) {
  set.seed(42)
  p <- ggplot(mtcars) +
    geom_point(aes(wt, mpg), color = 'red') +
    geom_text_repel(
      aes(wt, mpg, label = rownames(mtcars)),
      size = 5, force = 3, max.iter = n
    ) +
    theme_classic(base_size = 16)
  print(p)
}

saveGIF(
  lapply(ceiling(1.75^(1:12)), function(i) {
    plot_frame(i)
  }),
  interval = 0.20,
  ani.width = 800,
  ani.heigth = 600,
  movie.name = 'animated.gif'
)

animation of geom_repel_text

R Session Info

sessionInfo()
## R version 3.2.3 (2015-12-10)
## Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit)
## Running under: OS X 10.10.5 (Yosemite)
## 
## locale:
## [1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8
## 
## attached base packages:
## [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     
## 
## other attached packages:
## [1] ggrepel_0.6.3 ggplot2_2.1.0 knitr_1.13   
## 
## loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
##  [1] Rcpp_0.12.7      codetools_0.2-14 digest_0.6.10    grid_3.2.3      
##  [5] plyr_1.8.4       gtable_0.2.0     formatR_1.2.1    magrittr_1.5    
##  [9] evaluate_0.8     scales_0.4.0     stringi_1.1.1    labeling_0.3    
## [13] tools_3.2.3      stringr_1.1.0    munsell_0.4.3    colorspace_1.2-6