How to avoid overlapping text in a plotly scatter plot?

Question

I am looking for a solution to avoid overlapping text in the text-labels. I create the image with plotly scatter. Maybe there is an automation here.

from pandas import util
import plotly.express as px
import plotly.graph_objects as go

df = util.testing.makeDataFrame()
df_keyfigures_all = df[['A','B']]



fig = px.scatter(df_keyfigures_all, x="A", y="B",size_max=60,
                     text=df_keyfigures_all.index)

fig.update_traces(textposition='top center')
fig.layout = go.Layout(yaxis=dict(tickformat=".0%"), xaxis=dict(tickformat=".0%"),
                       yaxis_title="A", xaxis_title="B")


fig.update_layout(showlegend=False)
plotly.io.write_image(fig, file='keyfigures.png', format='png')

Answer 1

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a direct way to do this. A little digging on the plotly community forum will show you that it has already been requested and that the developers are aware of the issue.

Answer 2

One solution is to alternate the text position like in this live demo :

import pandas as pd
from plotly import express as px, graph_objects as go

df = pd.DataFrame()
df['x'] = [0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 11, 11, 12]
df['y'] = [57, 55, 75, 23, 80, 66, 66, 23, 79, 79, 20, 71, 59, 74, 82, 77]
df['explainer_name'] = ['tree_shap_approximation', 'saabas', 'tree_shap', 'baseline_random', 'archipelago',
                        'shapley_taylor_interaction', 'partition', 'anova', 'permutation_partition', 'permutation',
                        'shap_interaction', 'sage', 'maple', 'lime', 'kernel_shap', 'exact_shapley_values']

fig = px.scatter(df,
                     x='x',
                     y='y',
                     # size='dot_size',
                     text='explainer_name',
                     # log_x=True,
                     labels={
                         "x": "Time",
                         "y": "Score",
                         # 'dot_size': 'Portability',
                         'explainer_name': 'Explainer '
                     },
                     title='No overlapping annotations',  # take some vertical space
                     )
def improve_text_position(x):
    """ it is more efficient if the x values are sorted """
positions = ['top center', 'bottom center']  # you can add more: left center ...
return [positions[i % len(positions)] for i in range(len(x))]

fig.update_traces(textposition=improve_text_position(df['x']))
fig.show()

Before:

After:

Answer 3

It is not the perfect solution, but one way is to hide the text in the hover text.

fig = px.scatter(df_keyfigures_all, x="A", y="B",size_max=60,
                 hover_name = df_keyfigures_all.index)