Keeping plot legend in foreground

When I add a line object to my plot, the legend is for some reason pushed into the background behind the plot axis, where it is hidden. Why does this happen and how do I bring it into the foreground again?

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

Can you post your code?

Answer 1

[Matt Fig]

I cannot reproduce this with:

plot(1:10)
legend('plot')
line([5 5],[0 10])

So I want to ask what your code looks like. If you only have the one plot axes and the legend (no uicontrols or other figure children), then this will bring the legend back:

set(gcf,'children',flipud(get(gcf,'children')))

If you have other figure children, the idea is the same, you will just have to be more careful about the rearrangement.

Answer 2

[Andrianna Ayiotis]

I had a similar problem recently but with my legend hiding behind one of my 6 subplots. When I used

set(gcf,'children',flipud(get(gcf,'children')))

my legend would then hide behind other the other subplots if I dragged it up there.

The MATLAB documentation says that the 'children' property of gcf cannot be used to add or delete graphical arrays in the group, only to reorder them. Here is a general way to make sure the legend is in front of all the other plots but be careful with this method if you have overlapping subplots that need to be stacked in a certain order.

ax = get(gcf,'children');

ind = find(isgraphics(ax,'Legend'));

set(gcf,'children',ax([ind:end,1:ind-1]))

Answer 3

[Torben Knudsen]

I have solved a similar problem with

set(lh,'Color','white');

where lh is the legend handle