Plot Types Reference

matplotly detects the plot type of each series in your figure and shows the appropriate controls. This page lists every supported type and its available settings.

Line plots — ax.plot()

Each line gets a collapsible panel with:

Control	Description
Name	Editable label (syncs with legend)
Color	Color picker with palette dropdown
Linewidth	Slider (0.1 – 10)
Linestyle	Dropdown: solid, dashed, dotted, dash-dot
Alpha	Opacity slider (0 – 1)
Marker	Marker style dropdown (circle, square, triangle, etc.)
Marker size	Slider

Scatter plots — ax.scatter()

Control	Description
Name	Editable label
Face color	Color picker with palette dropdown
Edge color	Separate picker (auto-syncs with face color by default)
Marker	Style dropdown
Marker size	Slider
Alpha	Opacity slider
Edge width	Slider

Bar charts — ax.bar() / ax.barh()

Per-bar-group controls:

Control	Description
Name	Editable label
Color	Fill color picker
Edge color	Edge color picker
Edge width	Slider
Alpha	Opacity slider
Hatch	Pattern dropdown (/, \, |, -, +, x, or none)

Shared controls (apply to all bars in the subplot):

• Bar width — slider

• Gap — spacing between groups

• Orientation — vertical or horizontal

• Tick labels — editable labels for each bar position

Histograms — ax.hist()

Per-histogram controls: name, color, edge color, edge width, alpha, hatch.

Shared controls:

Control	Description
Bins	Number of bins slider
Histogram type	bar, step, or stepfilled
Mode	count, frequency, or density
Cumulative	Toggle
Orientation	Vertical or horizontal
Tick labels	Editable tick labels

Box plots — ax.boxplot()

Per-group controls:

Control	Description
Name	Editable label
Box color	Fill color
Box linewidth	Slider
Hatch	Pattern dropdown
Notch	Toggle
Median color	Color picker
Median linewidth	Slider
Whisker color	Color picker
Whisker linewidth	Slider
Whisker style	Linestyle dropdown
Cap color	Color picker
Cap linewidth	Slider
Flier color	Outlier marker color
Flier marker	Marker style dropdown
Flier size	Slider
Jitter alpha	Opacity for jitter points

Shared distribution controls (box, violin, and jitter):

• Display mode — box, violin, jitter, or combinations (box+violin, box+jitter, violin+jitter, box+violin+jitter)

• Box width / Violin width — sliders

• Gap — spacing between groups

• Orientation — vertical or horizontal

• Tick labels — editable

Violin plots — ax.violinplot()

Violin plots share the same distribution panel as box plots. All the controls listed under “Shared distribution controls” above apply, plus the per-group controls for box styling, median, whiskers, caps, and fliers.

Error bars — ax.errorbar()

Control	Description
Name	Editable label
Line color	Color picker
Linewidth	Slider
Linestyle	Dropdown
Marker	Style dropdown
Marker size	Slider
Alpha	Opacity slider
Cap size	Slider
Cap thickness	Slider

Heatmaps — ax.imshow() / ax.pcolormesh()

Control	Description
Colormap	Dropdown of matplotlib colormaps
Colorbar	Colorbar display settings

Fill regions — ax.fill_between() / ax.fill_betweenx()

Control	Description
Color	Fill color picker
Alpha	Opacity slider
Hatch	Pattern dropdown

Marginal plots

When a figure has a scatter plot with marginal histograms (e.g. joint plot), matplotly detects the marginal axes and adds separate histogram controls for the top and right margins. Marginal histogram color syncs with the scatter color by default.

Multi-subplot figures

For figures with multiple subplots, matplotly shows:

• A simplified Global panel (figure size and fonts only).

• A per-subplot panel for each axes, containing axes labels, limits, scales, spines, ticks, grid, and legend controls.

• Per-series panels grouped under their respective subplot.