How do I prevent the legend from Auto Updating?

When I have a legend, and then add another plot to the graph, it is automatically added to the legend. How do I prevent legend from auto updating?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

Starting in R2017a, if a legend is present, it will auto-update with new plots added to the axes.

The legend has been changed so that by default it updates when data is added to or removed from a plot automatically. To prevent this behavior, set the legends "AutoUpdate" property.

Ex:

x = linspace(0,2*pi);
y = sin(x);
plot(x,y)

legend('sin(x)','AutoUpdate','off')

To affect all new legends, set the value on the root level. To affect all legends in a figure:

fig = figure;
set(fig,'defaultLegendAutoUpdate','off');

To exclude an individual plot from the legend, set the "Annotation" property':

p = plot(1:10,'DisplayName','Line Chart');
hold on
s = stem(1:10,'DisplayName','Stem Chart');
hold off
s.Annotation.LegendInformation.IconDisplayStyle = 'off'; % make the legend for step plot off

legend('show')

For more information about this change, refer to the release notes:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/release-notes.html?rntext=legend

Also note that the "default" properties system inherits down the entire graphics hierarchy, as documented here:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/creating_plots/default-property-values.html

One can set the same property on the graphics root and it will apply to all figures in that MATLAB session:

set(groot,'defaultLegendAutoUpdate','off')

The above line can also be added to the MATLAB startup script if the user wants it to apply it to every MATLAB session.