This tutorial explains how to change the position of a single legend.
If you wish to reorder the layout of multiple legends, check here instead.
# packages library(ggplot2)library(dplyr)
# set the default global themetheme_set(theme_minimal(base_size = 14) + theme( # bold the legend title and labels legend.title = element_text(face = "bold"), legend.text = element_text(face = "bold")))
# create a scatterplotp <- mpg %>% ggplot(aes(displ, hwy, fill = class)) + geom_point(position = position_jitter(.1, 1, 1), shape = 21, size = 4, alpha = .7) + scale_fill_brewer(palette = "Set2")p
Optional values are right (default), top, left, and bottom. Once the legend is positioned to the bottom, it automatically takes a horizontal orientation.
p + theme(legend.position = "bottom") 
Alternatively, use a pair of coordinate values in the range of [0, 1] to specify the legend central position relative to the range of the plot.
# relocate legend to 70% of plot width, 75% of plot heightp2 <- p + theme(legend.position = c(.7, .75)) p2
The guides() function is a powerful tool to customize non-data related appearance of scales (including legends and axes). In this tutorial, as the legend is associated with the fill aesthetic, fill = ... is used inside the guides() function.
p2 + guides(fill = guide_legend(nrow = 3)) 
The guides syntax can be equivalently written inside the associated scale_* function. (The new scale_fill_brewer() overwrites the earlier one, and prompts a message reminder in the console.)
p2 + scale_fill_brewer( palette = "Set2", guide = guide_legend(nrow = 2))Scale for fill is already present.
Adding another scale for fill, which will replace the existing scale.Check here to find more techniques to customize the legend rows / columns.
