How to change fonts in matplotlib (python)?

101
votes

It sounds as an easy problem but I do not find any effective solution to change the font (not the font size) in a plot made with matplotlib in python.

I found a couple of tutorials to change the default font of matplotlib by modifying some files in the folders where matplotlib stores its default font - see this blog post - but I am looking for a less radical solution since I would like to use more than one font in my plot (text, label, axis label, etc).

5
pythonfontsmatplotlib
Glad it helped :) Can you post the code that causes this error? I haven't seen this error myself but here's some links that may help you. matplotlib.1069221.n5.nabble.com/… matplotlib.1069221.n5.nabble.com/Fonts-not-found-td12936.html - aidnani8
The code which generates the problem is: hfont = {'fontname':'Helvetica'} plt.annotate('Country ', (0.17,0.95), xytext=None, xycoords='figure fraction',size=28, color='red', horizontalalignment = 'left', **hfont) and the error is /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/m‌​atplotlib/font_manager.py:1236: UserWarning: findfont: Font family ['Helvetica'] not found. Falling back to Bitstream Vera Sans (prop.get_family(), self.defaultFamily[fontext])) instead if I use as fontname Comic Sans MS as in your example, the code works. - SirC

5 Answers

118
votes

Say you want Comic Sans for the title and Helvetica for the x label.

csfont = {'fontname':'Comic Sans MS'}
hfont = {'fontname':'Helvetica'}

plt.title('title',**csfont)
plt.xlabel('xlabel', **hfont)
plt.show()
63
votes

You can also use rcParams to change the font family globally.

 import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
 plt.rcParams["font.family"] = "cursive"
 # This will change to your computer's default cursive font

The list of matplotlib's font family arguments is here.

29
votes

I prefer to employ:

from matplotlib import rc
#rc('font',**{'family':'sans-serif','sans-serif':['Helvetica']})
rc('font',**{'family':'serif','serif':['Times']})
rc('text', usetex=True)
7
votes
import pylab as plb
plb.rcParams['font.size'] = 12

or 

import matplotlib.pyplot as mpl
mpl.rcParams['font.size'] = 12
3
votes

The Helvetica font does not come included with Windows, so to use it you must download it as a .ttf file. Then you can refer matplotlib to it like this (replace "crm10.ttf" with your file):

import os
from matplotlib import font_manager as fm, rcParams
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

fpath = os.path.join(rcParams["datapath"], "fonts/ttf/cmr10.ttf")
prop = fm.FontProperties(fname=fpath)
fname = os.path.split(fpath)[1]
ax.set_title('This is a special font: {}'.format(fname), fontproperties=prop)
ax.set_xlabel('This is the default font')

plt.show()

print(fpath) will show you where you should put the .ttf.

You can see the output here: https://matplotlib.org/gallery/api/font_file.html