Use custom scales for each facet

August 30, 2023

If I have the following plot

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(mtcars, aes(x=mpg, y=wt, color=as.factor(cyl))) + 
  geom_point(size=3) +  
  facet_wrap(~cyl)

^{Created on 2023-08-30 with reprex v2.0.2}

how can I set the limits of the x axis of each subplot individually?

I.e.

4: from 0 to 40
6: from 10 to 50
8: from -5 to 20

Thank you very much! (Note: not sure if that question was already asked, but I could not find anything that shows this specific use case)

>Solution :

I believe the package ggh4x could be helpful in this case, it allows you to set individual scale_x_continuous for each facet.

For example, your ggplot has three facets, you can supply a list (my custom_x for example) with three scale_x_continuous in ggh4x::facetted_pos_scales(). For this to work, you need to set facet_wrap(scales = "free_x").

library(ggplot2)
library(ggh4x)

custom_x <- list(
  scale_x_continuous(limits = c(0, 40)),
  scale_x_continuous(limits = c(10, 50)),
  scale_x_continuous(limits = c(-5, 20))
)

ggplot(mtcars, aes(x=mpg, y=wt, color=as.factor(cyl))) + 
  geom_point(size=3) +  
  facet_wrap(~cyl, scales = "free_x") +
  facetted_pos_scales(x = custom_x)