Close all figures except those listed
Editor's Note: This file was selected as MATLAB Central Pick of the Week
Currently, if you have many figures open at once, but decide you only want to keep one or two of them, you have to manually close all the other figures. This function is a simple tool for keeping the figures you want and closing all the others. Also, called with no arguments, 'cab' is a convenient, three-letter replacement for 'close all'.
Cite As
Karl (2021). Close all figures except those listed (https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/24420-close-all-figures-except-those-listed), MATLAB Central File Exchange. Retrieved .
Comments and Ratings (26)
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Acknowledgements
Inspired: Close all figures except specific (previously tagged) ones, Causal State Modeller Toolbox
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Thanks! :D
Love it!
Very useful!
Thank you!! :)
It works smoothly! I was coding it but then I found this. You saved me 30 minutes :)
Very nice !! Thanks
THANKS
Great! Just what I was looking for!
Cool!
Excellent code! Thanks
Thanks for the improvement, Thierry! The 'cellfun(@fcn, ...)' method, though elegant, unfortunately doesn't work on Matlab 6.x (which some of us still have to use. Sigh.)
Very handy indeed. And nice tweak, Thierry
Good idea!
I prefer to use 0 for gcf or 'last' option.
I've modified the function like this:
function cab(varargin)
% CAB close all but
% This function closes all figures currently open EXCEPT for
% those listed as arguments. 'cab' stands for 'close all but'.
%
% SYNTAX:
% CAB figure_handle1 figure_handle2 ... (command line syntax)
% CAB(figure_handle1, figure_handle2, ...)
% Use 0 for gcf. CAB 0 closes all figures except current one.
% CAB : same as close all
%
if nargin==0,
close all;
return
end
% all_figs = findall(0, 'type', 'figure'); % Uncomment this to include ALL windows, including those with hidden handles (e.g. GUIs)
all_figs = findobj(0, 'type', 'figure');
if iscellstr(varargin) % command line syntax
figs2keep=cellfun(@str2double,varargin);
else
figs2keep=[varargin{:}];
end
figs2keep(figs2keep==0)=gcf;
delete(setdiff(all_figs, figs2keep)
A fantastic short code to save time ! Thanks for this submission!
I love it. Not sure how I got along for 15 years without it! One small note - the "last" syntax actually keeps the current figure open, which wasn't necessarily the last one created. I love this behavior so much, that I tweaked CAB to do this with no input arguments, too.
Thanks for a simple, elegant, and very useful function.
Cool things. I love it. It is really useful to me as i work with a lot of figures open.