How do I remove the border lines surrounding an axes?

When I make a simple plot, I would like to turn off the border around the axes. However,

box off

removes only part of the border. I have removed all of the tick marks and labels, but there are still 2 border lines present. Is there a way to remove them?

You can reproduce the issue as follows:

hAx = axes;
set(hAx, 'box','off','XTickLabel',[],'XTick',[],'YTickLabel',[],'YTick',[])

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

The ability to remove all of the border lines surrounding an axes is available in MATLAB R2016a and onward. For example:

hF = figure();
hA = axes(hF);

plot(1:10);

set(hA, 'XTick', [], 'XTickLabel', []);
set(hA, 'YTick', [], 'YTickLabel', []);
set(get(hA, 'XAxis'), 'Visible', 'off');
set(get(hA, 'YAxis'), 'Visible', 'off');

For MATLAB releases prior to R2016a, depending on your application, you might be able to use one of the following options as a workaround:

1. You can change the 'XColor' and 'YColor' properties of the axes to match the color of the background of the figure. This makes the axis lines invisible against the figure background. You must also eliminate the tick marks and minor tick marks that extend into the axes. The easiest way to do this is to change their direction such that they point outward, as opposed to inward. For example:

hFig = figure;
plot(1:10)
color = get(hFig,'Color');
set(gca,'XColor',color,'YColor',color,'TickDir','out')

2. Make the axes invisible by setting the axes 'Visible' property to 'off'. For example:

plot(1:10)
set(gca,'Visible','off')

Answer 2

[Royi Avital]

In newer MATLAB versions this can be done using the XAxis and YAxis sub objectes:

hF = figure();
hA = axes(hF);

set(hA, 'XTick', [], 'XTickLabel', []);
set(hA, 'YTick', [], 'YTickLabel', []);
set(get(hA, 'XAxis'), 'Visible', 'off');
set(get(hA, 'YAxis'), 'Visible', 'off');

This will result in a clean axes.

[Matt]

Hi Royi, thank you for bringing this to our attention. I have updated the article to incorporate this work around.