How to disable bbox_inches='tight' when working with matplotlib inline in ipython notebook

Question

When work with matplotlib inline backend in ipython notebook, the default behavior is using bbox_inches=\'tight\' to generate the embedded png image internally via savefig()

Answer 1

You may use pyplot.subplots to align the plots in a grid order, so the figures will be visually aligned in notebook (if that's what you want?)

Something like this:

%matplotlib inline
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

d1 = np.random.rand(100)
d2 = np.random.rand(100)*10000

fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(nrows=2, ncols=1)
plt.subplots_adjust(left=0.2)
ax1.plot(d1)
ax2.plot(d2)

Updates

As OP's requirements to use separate plots rather than subplots, here is a hacky solution. This is working on my Notebook, more details about the customization can be found HERE.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

%matplotlib inline

# to override ytick.major.width before any plot
plt.rcParams['ytick.major.pad'] = 20
plt.plot(np.random.rand(100))

# another override to set alignment for the plot 
plt.rcParams['ytick.major.pad'] = 5
plt.figure()
plt.plot(np.random.rand(100)*10000)

# plt.rcdefaults() will reset everything to defaults as the doc says.

Not the most elegant way but it's working as required.

Answer 2

There's a fuller answer here: Matplotlib and Ipython-notebook: Displaying exactly the figure that will be saved

The trick is to turn off the bbox_inches='tight' setting in ipython. It's a bit awkward to do temporarily, but just run the IPython magic in a block: %config InlineBackend.print_figure_kwargs = {'bbox_inches':None}

If you want to switch back to the normal way, where axis labels are automatically never cut, you can run %config InlineBackend.print_figure_kwargs = {'bbox_inches':'tight'} but it has to be after the block where you do the plotting that needs precise bounding boxes.