Documentation

Show or Hide Axes Toolbar

To show or hide the axes toolbar, set the Visible property of the AxesToolbar object to 'on' or 'off', respectively. For example, hide the toolbar for the current axes:

ax = gca;
ax.Toolbar.Visible = 'off';

Customize Axes Toolbar

You can customize the options available in the axes toolbar using the axtoolbar and axtoolbarbtn functions.

For example, add a custom state button for the axes toolbar that turns on and off the axes grid lines. First, create a program file called mycustomstatebutton.m. Within the program file:

When you run the program file, click the icon to turn on and off the grid lines.

function mycustomstatebutton

plot(rand(5))
ax = gca;
tb = axtoolbar(ax,{'zoomin','zoomout','restoreview'});

btn = axtoolbarbtn(tb,'state');
btn.Icon = 'mygridicon.png';
btn.Tooltip = 'Grid Lines';
btn.ValueChangedFcn = @customcallback;

    function customcallback(src,event)
        switch src.Value
            case 'off'
                event.Axes.XGrid = 'off';
                event.Axes.YGrid = 'off';
                event.Axes.ZGrid = 'off';
            case 'on'
                event.Axes.XGrid = 'on';
                event.Axes.YGrid = 'on';
                event.Axes.ZGrid = 'on';
        end
    end

end

Enable or Disable Built-In Interactions

To control whether a set of built-in interactions is enabled within a chart, use the disableDefaultInteractivity and enableDefaultInteractivity functions. Sometimes MATLAB^® automatically disables the built-in interactions. For example, they might be disabled for charts that have special features, or when you implement certain callbacks such as a WindowScrollWheelFcn.

Customize Built-In Interactions

Most types of axes include a default set of built-in interactions that correspond to specific gestures. The interactions that are available depend on the contents of the axes. Most Cartesian axes include interactions for scrolling to zoom, hovering or clicking to display data tips, and dragging to pan (in a 2-D view) or rotate (in a 3-D view). You can replace the default set with a new set of interactions, but you cannot access or modify any of the interactions in the default set.

To replace the default interactions, set the Interactions property of the axes to an array of interaction objects. Choose a compatible combination of interaction objects from the following table. To delete all interactions from the axes, set the property to an empty array ([]).

For example, create a plot containing 1000 scattered points.

x = 1:500;
y = randn(1,500);
y2 = 5*randn(1,500) + 10;
plot(x,y,'.',x,y2,'.')

By default, this plot has a set of interactions that includes dragging to pan within the chart area. However, because the plot has a dense collection of points, a more useful set of interactions might include one that allows you to zoom into specific regions of the plot. The regionZoomInteraction object provides this functionality. Replace the default set of interactions for the current axes with an array that includes the regionZoomInteraction object.

ax = gca;
ax.Interactions = [zoomInteraction regionZoomInteraction rulerPanInteraction];

Now, dragging within the plot area defines a rectangular region of interest to zoom into.