Stop matplotlib repeating labels in legend

plt.legend takes as parameters

  1. A list of axis handles which are Artist objects
  2. A list of labels which are strings

These parameters are both optional defaulting to plt.gca().get_legend_handles_labels().
You can remove duplicate labels by putting them in a dictionary before calling legend. This is because dicts can’t have duplicate keys.

For example:

For Python versions < 3.7

from collections import OrderedDict
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

handles, labels = plt.gca().get_legend_handles_labels()
by_label = OrderedDict(zip(labels, handles))
plt.legend(by_label.values(), by_label.keys())

For Python versions > 3.7

As of Python 3.7, dictionaries retain input order by default. Thus, there is no need for OrderedDict form the collections module.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

handles, labels = plt.gca().get_legend_handles_labels()
by_label = dict(zip(labels, handles))
plt.legend(by_label.values(), by_label.keys())

enter image description here

Docs for plt.legend

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