How do I make my axis ticks bigger in matplotlib

Question

I'm currently working on a program for graphing data, and I need a way to make the number ticks on the axis bigger, and the axis's thicker. Is there a way to do this? I have tried looking everywhere, but I can't find a single thing on it. I'm using PyQt5 with Spyder

Answer 1

Tick and axis parameters are assigned differently.

To access the axis lines, you can use ax.spines[<axis>] and then use set_linewidth() .

To set ticks parameters you either use ax.tick_params and specify for which axis and tick type you want to apply the parameters, otherwise, access single axis through ax.xaxis or ax.yaxis .

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)

# set the axis line width in pixels
for axis in 'left', 'bottom':
  ax.spines[axis].set_linewidth(2.5)

# set the parameters for both axis: label size in font points, the line tick line 
# width and length in pixels
ax.tick_params(axis='both', which='major', labelsize=20, width=2.5, length=10)

# alternatively, set for individual axis:
#ax.xaxis.set_tick_params(which='major', labelsize=20, width=2.5, length=10)
#ax.yaxis.set_tick_params(which='major', labelsize=20, width=2.5, length=10)

plt.show()