How to clear a plot in Matplotlib in Python

Matplotlib is a graphing library that involves plotting various graphs and charts. Often during run-time, we may wish to change which graph is being displayed. Instead of closing the whole window and opening a new matplotlib window, we can just clear the old plot and plot a new one.

Let’s explore how we can do so.

Clear a Plot in Matplotlib with clf()

In order to clear the currently drawn Graph/Chart, we can use the clf() function (Which I believe stands for “clear figure“).

An example of how it may be used it as follows:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

f1 = plt.figure()
plt.plot([1, 2, 3])

plt.clf()
plt.show()

This will produce the following output:

As you can see here, the whole graph has been wiped out. Both the axes and the figure have been cleared.

That wasn’t a very great example though as the graph was cleared right from the start. Here is another example which uses matplotlib’s animation module to clear the graph after a second.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.animation import FuncAnimation

def input_func(n):
    plt.clf()

f1 = plt.figure()
plt.plot([1, 2, 3])

animation = FuncAnimation(f1, input_func, range(1), interval = 1000)
plt.show()

Try running this code yourself to see its effect.

Clear Axes in Matplotlib with cla()

Removing the entire figure along with the axes can make the result look a bit awkward. If you want to leave the axes in, while only clearing the graph/chart, then use cla() instead.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.animation import FuncAnimation

def input_func(e):
    plt.cla()

f1 = plt.figure()
plt.plot([1, 2, 3])

animation = FuncAnimation(f1, input_func, range(1), interval = 1000)
plt.show()

The output:

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