What happened to the figure toolbar? Why is it an axes toolbar? How can I put the buttons back?

From R2018b onwards, tools such as the zoom, pan, datatip, etc are no longer at the toolbar at the top of the figure window. These buttons are now in an "axes" toolbar and only appear when you hover your mouse over the plot. How do I put the buttons back at the top of the figure window?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

From the R2018b release onwards, you can drag-to-pan and scroll-to-zoom in an axes without having to call any MATLAB functions or select any toolbar buttons. Most types of axes include a default set of built-in interactions, but you can customize them by setting the Interactions property of the axes.  For more information about controlling chart interactivity, see the following link:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/creating_plots/control-axes-interactions.html

You can also return the tools to the figure toolbar using the "addToolbarExplorationButtons" function. Please refer to the following code for an example:

surf(peaks)\naddToolbarExplorationButtons(gcf) % Adds buttons to figure toolbar

You can also hide or remove the axes toolbar with the code below:

ax = gca;\n\nax.Toolbar.Visible = 'off'; % Turns off the axes toolbar\n%or\nax.Toolbar = []; % Removes axes toolbar data

If you would like to ensure that figures always open with the tools in the toolbar and that axes never contain a toolbar, execute the following code:

>>set(groot,'defaultFigureCreateFcn',@(fig,~)addToolbarExplorationButtons(fig))

Execute the below code if you are using R2018b or R2019a release:

>>set(groot,'defaultAxesCreateFcn',@(ax,~)set(ax.Toolbar,'Visible','off'))

Execute the below code if you are using R2019b and onwards release:

>>set(groot,'defaultAxesToolbarVisible','off')

The above settings will be reset when MATLAB re-starts.  To ensure that these settings are used even after MATLAB re-starts, place the above "set" commands in a 'startup.m' file. The 'startup.m' file, when placed on the MATLAB Path, is run during the program start-up process.  For more information about 'startup.m' files, see the following link:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/startup.html

UPDATE (8/15/19):

Thank you for all of your comments and proposals about the axes toolbar.

We have heard your feedback and worked with members of the community on ways to improve the axes toolbar experience.  With R2019a we released several enhancements to the axes toolbar, including faster startup time, ability to hover directly over the toolbar to make it visible, and improved performance with dense surface data.  Additionally, with R2018b Update 5 we have made performance improvements to the axes toolbar startup time.  We will continue to develop enhancements to the axes toolbar experience, and would like to thank you again for your feedback to help us improve our products.

 

You can download the latest updates using the following link:https://www.mathworks.com/downloads/web_downloads/

 

[G Smith]

Thank you. I am glad this answer is here. I just wish the solution would not require so much effort. Can this be a setting in the MATLAB preferences?

Auto-hiding elements makes for horrible usability when solving problems. I use these tools a lot, and most of the time when I move my cursor to the region with the tools, they are hidden! I have to stop what I am doing, recognize why they are missing, move my cursor inside the plot, wait a full second while the fade-in animation does its painfully slow thing, then move the cursor back to the position I had it originally! While the process is not difficult, it destroys my concentration by requiring me to focus on the (horrible) MATLAB UI instead of the problem I am trying to solve.

[Logan West]

I concur. This annoys me every time I open a figure in MATLAB now. I go looking to rotate an figure and unless I'm hovering over the figure, the tools are invisible. And then if I move away at all, the tools disappear and I have to start over by moving the cursor back to the figure. I shouldn't have to always hover over the image as the first step to zooming, data brushing, data tips, rotating, or anything else. At the very least, this should be a preference option to keep this VERY commonly used toolbar always visible.

[Igor]

There's a minor problem with

set(groot,'defaultFigureCreateFcn','addToolbarExplorationButtons(gcf)')

in combination with

f = figure( 'HandleVisibility', 'off' );

- it would create two figures (due to `gcf`). So I had to modify my old code a bit. But.... Isn't there any other way around?

[Michel Vergeau]

Concur also. This change is dramatic ! Many of the work depending the data exploration. We have to downgrade to R2018a because this stupid change for change ! As others said, the very least solution is to provide an opt-in-out in preference.

[Monica Roberts]

Igor. The behavior you are describing is due to the use of gcf. You can try this instead:

set(groot,'defaultFigureCreateFcn',@(fig, ~)addToolbarExplorationButtons(fig))

[Igor]

Monica, thanks! Your version works great. Now I only wonder why the original post is not using this version :) .

[TurqoiseInt]

Support Team, Monica, thanks!

How about subplot? These in my startup.m

 set(groot,'defaultFigureCreateFcn',@(fig, ~)addToolbarExplorationButtons(fig))
 set(groot,'defaultAxesCreateFcn','set(get(gca,''Toolbar''),''Visible'',''off'')')

and I'll still get the toolbar to the second subplot:

 figure; subplot(2,1,1); plot(1,'*'); subplot(2,1,2); plot(1,'o');

[F.L.]

This functionality starts to get annoying. Apparently if you open a new scope in Simulink, it also opens a new Matlab figure using the given solution. Is there a stable cure for this?

[Robert Aho]

Just wanted to add that whomever thought this was a good idea should be informed it is a very bad idea. It was poorly implemented, poorly documented, and treats the customers poorly. However, I am impressed by the stupidity it must have taken to select this course. I assume it came from a meeting; meetings exist because one of us alone cannot match the aggregate stupidity of all of us together.

[Amir Moghadam]

It is funny that the number of votes that the complaint answers have is much higher than the votes your answer has.

Hopefully that tells the design team something.

[Nathan Pallo]

Agree. Please revert

[Monica Roberts]

The issues that TurqoiseInt and F.L. brought up about subplot and Simulink scope are solved by changing the second line to the following which has been updated in the answer.

set(groot,'defaultAxesCreateFcn',@(ax,~)set(ax.Toolbar,'Visible','off'))

[Michel Vergeau]

There's still issus when opening previously save .FIG (2018A), the AxisToolbar appears again.

You have to manually delete the axestoolbar with handles.

[Dan K.]

Does anybody know if it is possible (or more precisely how to) have multiple defaultFigureCreateFcns? I already have a default creation function that adds a oneclick copy figure to the toolbar. Yes, I know that I could create a wrapper function that contains both functions and calls them sequentially, but that just adds additional layers of complexity.

Thanks.

[Bruno Luong]

Strictly speaking, no. The property defaultFigureCreateFcns must contain zero/one callback function as with the case with all callbacks.

But you can put many commands in one function, depending on the commands you can do something like this for anonymous function (each command return one output)

set(groot,'defaultAxesCreateFcn',...
    @(ax,~) {set(ax.Toolbar,'Visible','off'), ...
             fprintf('annoying floating toolbar turn off\n')})

[Yair Altman]

Readers should note that the anonymous-function syntax

@(h,e) {command1, comand2, ...}

in its use for callback functions is undocumented (reference), although one could say that it's a logical extension of the ability to specify an anonymous function that returns a cell-array. It's an interesting use-case with multiple programmatic applications, so I think I'll blog about it. Thanks for the idea Bruno :-)

Caveat: this trick only works with commands that return an output value. The anonymous function tries to evaluate a cell array of values provided by the constituent commands, so if any command does not return a value the corresponding cell cannot be evaluated.

For example, the command disp('123') will cause a run-time error ("Too many output arguments") because it does not return an output value.

On the other hand, the command set(ax.Toolbar,'Visible','off') does work, because it returns an output value of [] (this is yet another undocumented feature - the 3-input set command is not documented to return anything). Similarly, fprintf(...) works because it returns a value (the number of characters that it outputted).

[Rik]

I though you were making a typo when you said it would return the error too many output arguments, so I made this MWE.

figure(1),clf(1)
CallbackFcn=@(h,e) {set(gcbo,'String',datestr(now)),disp('a')};
uicontrol(...
    'Units','Normalized',...
    'Position',[.1 .1 .8 .8],...
        'Callback',CallbackFcn)

And it actually does return the too many output arguments error. It does succesfully execute the first command of course. Also, this behaviour is not limited to callbacks, as running CallbackFcn() returns the same error.

Matlab can be weird sometimes...

[Bruno Luong]

Matlab can be weird sometimes...

Nothing is weird. The trick is tell MATLAB to regroup the outputs of commands in the cell so that MATLAB just executes them sequenctially. DISP does not return any output so it throw the error message "too many output arguments".

[Rik]

Now I get it, I was looking at it from the wrong way.

For people who made the same mistake: the error occurs because the syntax is essentially requesting a single output (even if it is only an empty []), so it is equivalent to this

arg_out=someFunction;
function someFunction
end

So the error occurs because too many outputs are requested, not because there are too many returned. (Now I come to think about it, that is not how Matlab works in the first place, so that wouldn't even have made sense.)

[Benoît Pardoen]

Could you also indicate how to reactivate the plottools on/off button in the figure toolbar ? Is there a default code as : set(groot,'defaultFigureCreateFcn',@(fig,~)add...???...Buttons(fig)) ?

(question here https://nl.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/424530-plottools-on-off-button-in-figure-toolbar-r2018b )

[Robert White]

Please put the zoom tools back in the toolbar by default. Like everyone else on this forum, I used them all the time and I can't believe you hid them.

[Scott Nuccio]

I finally figured out a better way to return the buttons to the toolbar. See my post below and also here:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/100561-how-do-i-customize-a-figure-toolbar-by-removing-certain-buttons

[John]

I’m glad to see that MathWorks is working on improvements to resolve this. I have two suggestions for improvement. The two main problems with the new toolbar are 1) it takes longer to explore figures and 2) it’s not obvious which mode you are in.

1) If I select a line and then I want to use the box zoom I have to: click on the edit arrow to de-select it, move my cursor to the other side of the figure, wait for the hover, and then click the zoom icon. This used to be a single click on the zoom icon. This problem could be easily resolved by making the toolbar visible during edit mode (hover does not work in edit mode) so that the user could click directly on the zoom icon. Also, allowing some navigation during edit mode would be nice.

2) The user cannot quickly tell if they are in edit or navigation mode (sure you can look at the icon on the toolbar and see if it’s selected, but that’s annoying). The cursor is a white arrow when I’m in navigation mode (in this mode I can roll the mouse wheel to zoom), but when I’m in edit mode I see the same white cursor arrow (in this mode rolling the mouse wheel does nothing). Previously, every action had a different cursor icon (e.g. +, -, etc.) so you knew which mode you were in, and therefore how the mouse would respond. I would suggest making a separate icon for navigation, so the user can readily see which mode they’re in.

Answer 2

[Michael Montouchet]

I am using a scatter3. It used to be very easy to rotate the things I display, now I have to use this command before being able to use the camera rotation:

addToolbarExplorationButtons(gcf)

It used to be simple.

Why is Matlab deleting nice features?

The reasons why Matlab is better than Python are the UI, the support, good documentation, user-friendlyness. Please continue this way and stop deleting what makes it easy. Otherwise, I would not see the point of using Matlab instead of Python.

Answer 3

[Yair Altman]

For the benefit of readers who don't follow my blog, Michelle Hirsch posted the following comment yesterday, which sheds some light on the subject:

Rest assured the team is digging in to the feedback to figure out the best approach to addressing concerns.

One thing puzzles me about the whole conversation (esp. on MTLAB Answers). Nobody is mentioning the default axes interactions, which we introduced along with the axes toolbar. We actually felt this was the biggest breakthrough, because you don’t need to interact with the toolbar at all in order to zoom, pan, rotate, or add datatips to a chart. Any thoughts on this? There’s a huge banner on the figure in 18b that introduces these new gestures so we thought people would find them.

I also can clarify a couple of things from your post:

* The Toolstrip was not driven by the marketing guys (and gals!). It was very much driven by our interest in improving discoverability of key capabilities which were too buried in menus and toolbars.

* The axes toolbar was not created primarily to support the move to web graphics. We intended it to be a solution to multiple problems:

** The toolbar for a figure docked in the desktop can be very far from the figure itself.

** We’d like to move towards being able to define interactions at the axes level, instead of the figure level, since interactions are axes specific. The axes toolbar is one step in that direction

[Thomas Hoffend]

It sounds like Mathworks is having a difficult time reaching and understanding its core, long-term customers. "Improving discoverability" says quite a bit. Features intended to enhance discoverability belong in well-written and cross-referenced help files, documentation, and learning materials and not in the API. I am all for additions and new features provided they enhance productivity and workflow. Anything that upsets workflow is a roadblock. Anything that has to be undone by adding lines of code to startup files, increases mouse clicks, requires looking for a feature that has moved, shifts icons, modifies the API in any significant way that can't be customized in or out, or adds to the time delay launching figures is a roadblock.

[Logan West]

I don't know what the "huge banner on the figure in 18b" refers to and I'm unfamiliar with the new mouse gestures. I don't recall seeing a banner. It sounds interesting.

I don't mind axes-by-axes manipulation, it's probably a good idea. My main problem is with the hiding of those tools, where I now have to focus on getting them to to appear because they fade away. It's just bad for work flow, speed, and focus on the task as it interrupts me constantly.

[Thomas Hoffend]

I think the cryptic reference suggests the release notes web page for Matlab 2018b, but I am not sure. Axis interactions are listed under the Graphics section:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/release-notes.html

[David Goodmanson]

Hello Yair,

Could you explain where the "huge banner on the figure in 18b is?" Is the banner perhaps something that appears the first time that Matlab is invoked after download, and then not again? Maybe no one is talking about the new features because they are effectively hidden.

At any rate, documentation by banner is not what most people would call good software practice.

And in this case the regular documentation of the phantom toolbar does not work either, for a different reason: it's inaccurate. If you go to "Interactively Explore Plotted Data" it says: "Some types of interactions are enabled by default, while other types of interactions are only available through the axes toolbar. The toolbar appears at the top-right corner of the axes when you hover over it."

This is not true. It only appears when you hover the cursor over the actual plot. Then, as i mentioned in a separate comment, if you take the cursor off the plot (still in the figure window but not on the toolbar) the toolbar disappears again, intentionally taking away any visual knowledge of whether any of the toolbar zoom states are active or not. That's poor.

[Alaster Meehan]

I am yet to upgrade to 2018b but for my UI I'm hoping this will be a huge benefit. I have a complicated UI with multiple axis and controls. I wasted a lot of time trying to find work arounds to have different controls working on different images such as zoom. I'm hoping this change fixes this.

I feel that the change to controls being on the axis instead of the figure is long over due, not sure why there is such a big backlash.

[wea555]

Even in my complex GUI, with subplots, I don't want axis-specific controls. Just one button Zoom+ and I can zoom into all measurement channels. If I had to switch it on several times, this would be very annoying.

If someone wants axis-specific controls, make it an option to switch it on. But leave the old behaviour, because it is the most reasonable. Almost nobody likes the new one. Just leave it like it was before as default.

The fading-effekt is also very annoying. If somebody likes it, why not make it optional?

[bruno stricker]

totally agree with wea555..those new features would be maybe nice as an option, but are mostly annoying otherwise!

[DGM]

The dynamic visibility (fading effect) isn't just annoying. I will always argue that invisible elements are fundamentally the most anti-intuitive thing you could possibly incorporate into a UI. Besides that, I find that it's occasionally extremely laggy or broken. I can't count the number of times I've tried to get the axes toolbar to pop up and gotten nothing but a massive spike in CPU usage for about 10s as nothing useful happens. I end up having to click on the unresponsive axes, inadvertently adding a datatip or creating an interminable zoom box that will permanently follow the cursor until I close the figure.

Then again, prior to these changes, view controls were cumbersome to the point of ridiculousness. At least in 2D, FEX akzoom() had that solved. Now it's a weird mess of implicit and explicit controls, invisible UI elements and lag.

Answer 4

[Scott Nuccio]

Here is the best I have come up with. Thought I would share.

In my startup.m file I have the following line. They overwrite the new figure functions such that everytime you create a figure, the axes toolbar is removed and my script for adding the appropriate buttons to the figures toolbar is called.

try %#ok
    if ~verLessThan('matlab','9.5')
        set(groot,'defaultFigureCreateFcn',@(fig,~)figToolbarFix(fig));
        set(groot,'defaultAxesCreateFcn',@(ax,~)set(ax.Toolbar,'Visible','off'));
    end
end

My script for adding buttons to the toolbar is called 'figToolbarFix.m' and lives in my 'user -> documents -> matlab' folder with my 'startup.m' file.

function [] = figToolbarFix(hFig)
%UNTITLED2 Summary of this function goes here
%   Customize the default figure toolbar
%   hFig = handle of figure to be customized
%
%   Example: figToolbarFix(gcf);
%   Example: hFig=figure; figToolbarFix(hFig);

% enable the old 'zoom', 'rotation', 'pan', 'data tips', etc., buttons 
addToolbarExplorationButtons(hFig)

% load a pretty images to use for our buttons. Check MATLAB\release\toolbox\matlab\icons for other options, or
% make your own. Note the double conversion (rgb -> ind -> rgb) to normalize a png image.
[img1,map1] = rgb2ind(imread(fullfile(matlabroot,...
    'toolbox','matlab','icons','tool_plottools_show.png')),32);
[img2,map2] = imread(fullfile(matlabroot,...
    'toolbox','matlab','icons','pageicon.gif'));

% Convert image from indexed to truecolor (want true color RGB with values of 0 to 1)
icon1 = ind2rgb(img1,map1);
icon2 = ind2rgb(img2,map2);

% Get hiddenhandle of the toolbar we want to append to. By default the 'Figure Toolbar' is the only one active
% and should be listed last assuming a new, blank figure. Use 'figure; allchild(gcf)' to show all children
hToolbar=findall(gcf, 'type', 'uitoolbar'); %hToolbar=allchild(hFig); hToolbar=hToolbar(end);

%% for Seperate property editor and plot browser buttons
% % Add a new uipushtool to the end of the toolbar.
% uipushtool(hToolbar,'CData',icon1,...
%     'TooltipString','Property Editor',...
%     'ClickedCallback','propertyeditor',...
%     'Separator','on',...
%     'HandleVisibility','off');
% 
% % Add a new uipushtool to the end of the toolbar.
% uipushtool(hToolbar,'CData',icon2,...
%     'TooltipString','Plot Browser',...
%     'ClickedCallback','plotbrowser',...
%     'Separator','off',...
%     'HandleVisibility','off');

%% for a single toggle that opens/closes the previous state of the plot tools (use view menu to show/hide plot/browser/editor)
uitoggletool(hToolbar,'CData',icon1,...
    'TooltipString','Property Editor',...
    'OnCallBack','plottools(''on'')',...
    'OffCallBack','plottools(''off'')',...
    'Separator','on',...
    'HandleVisibility','off');

end

Take and go forth!!

Also see for more info and customizations:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/446208-customizing-the-matlab-figure-appearance-in-release-2018b-how-to-bring-back-plot-browser-icon-zoo#comment_703831

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/develop-apps-programmatically.html

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/uipushtool.html

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/plottools.html

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/plotbrowser.html

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/propertyeditor.html

https://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/customizing-standard-figure-toolbar-menubar/#Toolbar

https://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/figure-toolbar-components/

https://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/figure-toolbar-customizations

Good Luck

[Rik]

You could also consider these edits:

%in startup.m:

try %#ok
    if ~verLessThan('matlab','9.5')
        defaultFigureCreateFcn=@(fig,~)addToolbarExplorationButtons(fig);
        % Using evalc ensures that you can group functions in a single
        % anonymous function that otherwise have no output (as neither
        % disableDefaultInteractivity() nor set() have output arguments).
        defaultAxesCreateFcn=@(ax,~){...
            evalc('set(ax.Toolbar,''Visible'',''off'')'),...
            evalc('disableDefaultInteractivity(ax)')};
        set(groot,'defaultFigureCreateFcn', ...
            defaultFigureCreateFcn);
        set(groot,'defaultAxesCreateFcn',  ...
            defaultAxesCreateFcn);
    end
end

And/or:

%for use in functions you might need to share with others:

function fig=figure_legacy(varargin)
fig=figure(varargin{:});
try %#ok if verLessThan is missing verLessThan would have returned true
    if ~verLessThan('matlab','9.5')
        addToolbarExplorationButtons(fig)
        % Use eval to trick the syntax checking in ML6.5 (both the ~ and
        % the @ trip up the syntax checker).
        %
        % Using evalc ensures that you can group functions in a single
        % anonymous function that otherwise have no output (as neither
        % disableDefaultInteractivity() nor set() have output arguments).
        defaultAxesCreateFcn=eval(['@(ax,~){',...
            'evalc(''set(ax.Toolbar,''''Visible'''',''''off'''')''),',...
            'evalc(''disableDefaultInteractivity(ax)'')}']);
        set(fig,'defaultAxesCreateFcn',  ...
            defaultAxesCreateFcn);
    end
end
end

[Matt J]

A test of whether hToolbar is empty or not seems to be needed. I get frequent errors otherwise,

if ~isempty(hToolbar)
    

uitoggletool(hToolbar,'CData',icon1,...
    'TooltipString','Property Editor',...
    'OnCallBack','plottools(''on'')',...
    'OffCallBack','plottools(''off'')',...
    'Separator','on',...
    'HandleVisibility','off');

end

Answer 5

[Bruno Luong]

Duplicate my poste here

For R2019b all the tricks found previously no longer work.

I found this one does the trick

set(groot,'defaultAxesCreateFcn', ...
@(ax,varargin) start(timer('StartDelay',1,'ExecutionMode','singleShot','TimerFcn',@(varargin) axtoolbar(ax,{}))));

You might put it in startup.m file

if ~verLessThan('MATLAB','9.7')
    set(groot,'defaultAxesCreateFcn', ...
        @(ax,varargin) start(timer('StartDelay',1,'ExecutionMode','singleShot','TimerFcn',@(varargin) axtoolbar(ax,{}))));
end

[thosman]

Here are two additional ways to remove the toolbar in 2019b without timers. As mentioned elsewhere, place code for either method in your startup.m.

Method 1)

From playing around with removing the toolbar, I found that AxesCreateFcn method is no longer working as the cla(ax,'reset') is called after the axes is created (when hold is 'off' or the axes NextPlot property is "replace", which is the default). This resets the axes properties to their defaults (which appears to include the toolbar).

This method requires the axes to have hold on behavior by default, which bypasses the offending cla code path.

function SetDefaultFigureToolbar()
% Returns to pre-2018 style figures for all figures
% 
% Note! This forces all axes to have hold 'on' by default
% 
% Adds the toolbar back to the figure
% Removes the axes toolbar and interactions
% Set axes to be in hold 'on' mode by default

try %#ok
    if ~verLessThan('matlab','9.5') % if matlab version >= 2018b
        set(groot,'defaultFigureCreateFcn',@(fig,~)addToolbarExplorationButtons(fig));
        set(groot,'defaultAxesCreateFcn',  @axDefaultCreateFcn);
        set(groot, 'defaultAxesNextPlot', 'add'); % default hold 'on' behavior
    end
end

end

function axDefaultCreateFcn(hAxes, ~)
% On axes creation, remove the toolbar and interactions.
% From: 
% https://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/improving-graphics-interactivity

    try
        hAxes.Interactions = [];
        hAxes.Toolbar = [];
    catch
        % ignore - old Matlab release
    end
end

Method 2)

Removes the toolbar by making its default visible propery false. This method cannot remove interactions which have been shown to improve performance, but method 1 or the timer method by Bruno would allow for interaction update/removal.

set(groot, 'defaultAxesToolbarVisible', 'off')

Changes in default behavior

Finally, it is worth re-iterating that Method 1 changes default behavior by having hold on by default. Method 2 does not allow for adjustments to default interactions. Bruno's timer method should be able to accommodate both of these without changing matlab's default behavior.

Answer 6

[Mattiepi]

Like so many others in this string, I find that the newest manifestation of the axes tools is buggy, and less useful than the older way of doing things. I actually appreciate the need to interact with a button (and it should be a toggle button to ensure the user knows which mode is currently "ON") rather than having the program "guess" at what I want to do. Just because I clicked doesn't mean that I need a datatip everywhere. I sincerely hope The MathWorks takes these complaints to heart and reinstates the pre-2018b method of interacting with graphs.

[Fernando]

I can't understand how Matlab hasn't done that yet. Their slow-to-appear toolbar is an abomination.