ggguides (version 1.1.4)

legend_order: Reorder Legend Entries

Description

Change the order of legend entries without modifying factor levels in your data. This provides a simpler alternative to manually setting factor levels or using the breaks argument in scale functions.

Usage

legend_order(order, aesthetic = "colour")

Value

A ggplot2 scale object that reorders the legend.

Arguments

order

A character vector specifying the desired order of legend entries, or a function to apply to the current order (e.g., rev, sort).

aesthetic

Character string specifying which aesthetic's legend to reorder. Default is "colour". Common values: "colour", "color", "fill", "shape", "linetype", "size", "alpha".

Details

This function works by setting the breaks argument of the appropriate discrete scale. It automatically detects whether to use scale_colour_discrete, scale_fill_discrete, etc. based on the aesthetic argument.

When order is a function (like rev or sort), it will be applied to the default order of legend entries.

See Also

legend_reverse for a simpler way to reverse legend order, legend_style for styling legend appearance.

Examples

library(ggplot2)

p <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, wt, color = factor(cyl))) +
  geom_point(size = 3)

# Specify exact order
p + legend_order(c("8", "6", "4"))

# Reverse the order
p + legend_order(rev)

# Sort alphabetically/numerically
p + legend_order(sort)

# Reorder fill aesthetic
ggplot(mtcars, aes(factor(cyl), fill = factor(cyl))) +
  geom_bar() +
  legend_order(c("8", "4", "6"), aesthetic = "fill")