Auto-fit Legend to Plot Height

Measures the legend height relative to the plot panel and automatically wraps the legend into multiple columns if it would overflow. This function must be called on a complete ggplot object, not added with +.

Usage

legend_auto_fit(plot, max_ratio = 0.95)

Arguments

plot

A ggplot object.

max_ratio

Maximum ratio of legend height to panel height before wrapping is triggered. Default is 0.95 (95 percent of panel height).

Value

A modified ggplot object with adjusted legend layout.

Details

This function builds the plot to measure actual dimensions, then rebuilds with an appropriate number of legend rows if the legend is too tall. It's particularly useful after applying legend_style(angle = 90) which can cause legends to exceed the plot height.

Because this requires building the plot twice, it has a small performance cost. For static plots this is negligible.

See also

legend_style, legend_wrap

Examples

library(ggplot2)

# Legend with rotated text that might overflow
p <- ggplot(mpg, aes(displ, hwy, color = class)) +
  geom_point() +
  legend_style(angle = 90)

# Auto-fit will wrap if needed
legend_auto_fit(p)