How to remove a frame without removing the axes tick labels from a Matplotlib figure in Python?

To remove a frame without removing the axes tick labels from a Matplotlib figure, you can hide the spines (frame borders) while keeping the tick labels visible. This creates a clean plot appearance while maintaining readability.

Basic Steps

The process involves the following steps ?

• Set the figure size and adjust the padding between and around the subplots
• Create data points for plotting
• Plot the data using plot() method
• Use set_visible(False) to hide specific spines (frame borders)
• Display the figure using show() method

Example

Here's how to remove the frame while keeping tick labels ?

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.rcParams["figure.figsize"] = [7.50, 3.50]
plt.rcParams["figure.autolayout"] = True

y = [0, 2, 1, 5, 1, 2, 0]

plt.plot(y, color='red', lw=7)

# Remove all four spines (frame borders)
for pos in ['right', 'top', 'bottom', 'left']:
    plt.gca().spines[pos].set_visible(False)

plt.show()

Removing Specific Spines Only

You can also remove only certain spines while keeping others visible ?

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.rcParams["figure.figsize"] = [7.50, 3.50]
plt.rcParams["figure.autolayout"] = True

y = [0, 2, 1, 5, 1, 2, 0]

plt.plot(y, color='blue', lw=5)

# Remove only top and right spines
plt.gca().spines['top'].set_visible(False)
plt.gca().spines['right'].set_visible(False)

plt.show()

How It Works

The spines property controls the frame borders around the plot. By setting set_visible(False), you hide the visual frame while the axes and tick labels remain intact. The gca() function gets the current axes object, allowing you to modify spine properties.

Conclusion

Use spines[position].set_visible(False) to remove frame borders while preserving tick labels. This technique creates cleaner plots by removing visual clutter while maintaining data readability.