Rectangle Properties

Annotation rectangle appearance and behavior

Rectangle properties control the appearance and behavior of a Rectangle object. By changing property values, you can modify certain aspects of the rectangle. Use dot notation to query and set properties.

h = annotation("rectangle");
c = h.Color;
h.Color = "red";

Color and Styling

Color — Outline color

RGB triplet | hexadecimal color code | "r" | "g" | "b" | ...

Outline color, specified as an RGB triplet, a hexadecimal color code, a color name, or a short name. The default value of [0 0 0] corresponds to black.

For a custom color, specify an RGB triplet or a hexadecimal color code.

• An RGB triplet is a three-element row vector whose elements specify the intensities of the red, green, and blue components of the color. The intensities must be in the range [0,1], for example, [0.4 0.6 0.7].

• A hexadecimal color code is a string scalar or character vector that starts with a hash symbol (#) followed by three or six hexadecimal digits, which can range from 0 to F. The values are not case sensitive. Therefore, the color codes "#FF8800", "#ff8800", "#F80", and "#f80" are equivalent.

Alternatively, you can specify some common colors by name. This table lists the named color options, the equivalent RGB triplets, and the hexadecimal color codes.

Color Name	Short Name	RGB Triplet	Hexadecimal Color Code	Appearance
"red"	"r"	[1 0 0]	"#FF0000"
"green"	"g"	[0 1 0]	"#00FF00"
"blue"	"b"	[0 0 1]	"#0000FF"
"cyan"	"c"	[0 1 1]	"#00FFFF"
"magenta"	"m"	[1 0 1]	"#FF00FF"
"yellow"	"y"	[1 1 0]	"#FFFF00"
"black"	"k"	[0 0 0]	"#000000"
"white"	"w"	[1 1 1]	"#FFFFFF"
"none"	Not applicable	Not applicable	Not applicable	No color

This table lists the default color palettes for plots in the light and dark themes.

Palette	Palette Colors
"gem" — Light theme default Before R2025a: Most plots use these colors by default.
"glow" — Dark theme default

You can get the RGB triplets and hexadecimal color codes for these palettes using the orderedcolors and rgb2hex functions. For example, get the RGB triplets for the "gem" palette and convert them to hexadecimal color codes.

RGB = orderedcolors("gem");
H = rgb2hex(RGB);

Before R2023b: Get the RGB triplets using RGB = get(groot,"FactoryAxesColorOrder").

Before R2024a: Get the hexadecimal color codes using H = compose("#%02X%02X%02X",round(RGB*255)).

Example: "blue"

Example: [0 0 1]

Example: "#0000FF"

FaceColor — Fill color

"none" (default) | RGB triplet | hexadecimal color code | "r" | "g" | "b" | ...

Fill color, specified as an RGB triplet, a hexadecimal color code, a color name, or a short name.

For a custom color, specify an RGB triplet or a hexadecimal color code.

• An RGB triplet is a three-element row vector whose elements specify the intensities of the red, green, and blue components of the color. The intensities must be in the range [0,1], for example, [0.4 0.6 0.7].

• A hexadecimal color code is a string scalar or character vector that starts with a hash symbol (#) followed by three or six hexadecimal digits, which can range from 0 to F. The values are not case sensitive. Therefore, the color codes "#FF8800", "#ff8800", "#F80", and "#f80" are equivalent.

Alternatively, you can specify some common colors by name. This table lists the named color options, the equivalent RGB triplets, and the hexadecimal color codes.

Color Name	Short Name	RGB Triplet	Hexadecimal Color Code	Appearance
"red"	"r"	[1 0 0]	"#FF0000"
"green"	"g"	[0 1 0]	"#00FF00"
"blue"	"b"	[0 0 1]	"#0000FF"
"cyan"	"c"	[0 1 1]	"#00FFFF"
"magenta"	"m"	[1 0 1]	"#FF00FF"
"yellow"	"y"	[1 1 0]	"#FFFF00"
"black"	"k"	[0 0 0]	"#000000"
"white"	"w"	[1 1 1]	"#FFFFFF"
"none"	Not applicable	Not applicable	Not applicable	No color

This table lists the default color palettes for plots in the light and dark themes.

Palette	Palette Colors
"gem" — Light theme default Before R2025a: Most plots use these colors by default.
"glow" — Dark theme default

You can get the RGB triplets and hexadecimal color codes for these palettes using the orderedcolors and rgb2hex functions. For example, get the RGB triplets for the "gem" palette and convert them to hexadecimal color codes.

RGB = orderedcolors("gem");
H = rgb2hex(RGB);

Before R2023b: Get the RGB triplets using RGB = get(groot,"FactoryAxesColorOrder").

Before R2024a: Get the hexadecimal color codes using H = compose("#%02X%02X%02X",round(RGB*255)).

Example: "blue"

Example: [0 0 1]

Example: "#0000FF"

FaceAlpha — Fill transparency

1 (default) | value in range [0,1]

Fill transparency, specified as a scalar value in the range [0,1]. A value of 1 is opaque and 0 is completely transparent. Values between 0 and 1 are semitransparent.

Example: 0.5

LineStyle — Line style

"-" (default) | "--" | ":" | "-." | "none"

Line style, specified as one of the options listed in this table.

Line Style	Description	Resulting Line
"-"	Solid line
"--"	Dashed line
":"	Dotted line
"-."	Dash-dotted line
"none"	No line	No line

LineWidth — Line width

0.5 (default) | positive value

Line width of rectangle outline, specified as a positive value in point units. One point equals 1/72 inch.

Example: 0.75

Position

Position — Size and location

[0.3 0.3 0.1 0.1] (default) | four-element vector

Size and location, specified as a four-element vector of the form [x y length height]. The first two elements specify the coordinates of the lower left corner of the rectangle. The second two elements specify the length and height of the rectangle.

By default, the units are normalized to the figure. The lower-left corner of the figure maps to (0,0) and the upper-right corner maps to (1,1). To change the units, use the Units property.

Example: [0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5]

Rotation — Rotation angle in degrees

0 (default) | scalar numeric value

Rotation angle in degrees, specified as a scalar numeric value. Rotation angle is absolute and not relative to previous rotations.

This table shows the resulting annotation rotation for the possible Rotation values.

Rotation Value	Resulting Rotation
0	Unrotated
Positive scalar value	Rotated counterclockwise by the specified number of degrees
Negative scalar value	Rotated clockwise by the specified number of degrees

The anchor point for rotation is the location specified by the first two elements of the Position property vector, indicated by the [x y] values.

Example: 45

Units — Position units

"normalized" (default) | "inches" | "centimeters" | "characters" | "points" | "pixels"

Position units, specified as one of the values in this table.

Units	Description
"normalized" (default)	Normalized with respect to the figure, uipanel, or uitab that contains the annotation. The lower-left corner of the container maps to (0,0) and the upper-right corner maps to (1,1).
"inches"	Inches.
"centimeters"	Centimeters.
"characters"	Based on the default system font character size. Character width = width of letter x. Character height = distance between the baselines of two lines of text.
"points"	Points. One point equals 1/72 inch.
"pixels"	Pixels. On Windows® and Macintosh systems, the size of a pixel is 1/96th of an inch. This size is independent of your system resolution. On Linux® systems, the size of a pixel is determined by your system resolution.

All units are measured from the lower-left corner of the figure window.

This property affects the Position property. If you change the units, then it is good practice to return it to the default value after completing your computation to prevent affecting other functions that assume Units is set to the default value.

If you specify the Position and Units properties using name-value arguments when creating the object, then the order of specification matters. If you want to define the position with particular units, then you must set the Units property before the Position property.

Version History

Introduced before R2006a

R2022a: Rotate annotation

Rotate the annotation the specified number of degrees using the Rotation property. The anchor point for rotation is the location specified by the Position property, so the Position property is unaffected by rotation.