{"id":400788,"date":"2026-04-25T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.seascapemodels.org\/posts\/2026-04-23-clear-plots-ggplot-for-mobile\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T14:00:00","slug":"design-your-plots-ggplot-for-mobile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/2026\/04\/design-your-plots-ggplot-for-mobile\/","title":{"rendered":"Design your plots (ggplot) for mobile"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n\r\n
\r\n[This article was first published on Seascapemodels<\/a><\/strong>, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers<\/a>]. (You can report issue about the content on this page here<\/a>)\r\n
Want to share your content on R-bloggers? click here<\/a> if you have a blog, or here<\/a> if you don't.\r\n<\/div>\n \n\n\n\n\n\n

The default for styling plots should be for easy viewing on mobile devices.<\/p>\n

Most digital interactions are via mobile these days. Even if you plan on viewing your plots on a desktop, a mobile friendly layout will make them more readable.<\/p>\n

I recommend defaulting to a mobile friendly view from day 1 of data exploration. This means using larger font, line and label sizes than standard plotting package defaults. I\u2019ll show how below.<\/p>\n

You can then alter the styling as your finalize the plots of publication, where desktop viewing might be more common (I saw \u2018might be\u2019 because I frequently papers on my phone these days).<\/p>\n

Styling plots for visual clarity is key from the start, because clarity of presentation influences how you interpret the research. So it has a tangible impact on the way your research will develop and how you engage with your collaborators.<\/p>\n

I often communicate with collaborators and students via instant messages (e.g.\u00a0Teams), which allows for quick feedback cycles. The default ggplot settings can be hard to view however.<\/p>\n

There are many good books on making graphs, e.g.\u00a0check out the Functional Art by Alberto Cairo.<\/p>\n

Below I just want to show a few tips for improving ggplot2 settings to get better visuals for mobile.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll use one of my example datasets<\/a> from an algal growth experiment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can load it directly from the url.<\/p>\n

The biggest tip is to change the base size in your base theme. If you do this with theme_set<\/code> it then applies to all plots in this R session.<\/p>\n

library(tidyverse)\r\n# Read raw data\ndat <- read.csv("https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/cbrown5\/example-ecological-data\/main\/data\/algal-stressors\/diuron_data.csv")\n\ntheme_set(theme_bw(base_size = 28))\n\nggplot(dat) + \n    aes(x = hours, y = celld) + \n    geom_point(alpha = 0.5) +\n    labs(x = "Hours", y = "Cell density")\r\nWarning: Removed 75 rows containing missing values or values outside the scale range\n(`geom_point()`).<\/pre>\n
<\/p>\n
Second tip is to keep facts to 3 or so panels.<\/p>\n
Before:<\/p>\n
ggplot(dat) + \n    aes(x = hours, y = celld) + \n    geom_point(alpha = 0.5) + \n    facet_grid(Diuron_num~Light_num) +\n    labs(x = "Hours", y = "Cell density")<\/pre>\n
<\/p>\n
Better:<\/p>\n
dat |>\n    filter(Diuron_num == 1) |>\n    ggplot() +\n    aes(x = hours, y = celld) + \n    geom_point(alpha = 0.5) + \n    facet_wrap(.~Light_num) + \n    labs(x = "Hours", y = "Cell density", title = "Diuron = 1")<\/pre>\n
<\/p>\n
Best: for mobile ,use a vertical arrangement<\/p>\n
dat |>\n    filter(Diuron_num == 1) |>\n    ggplot() +\n    aes(x = hours, y = celld) + \n    geom_point(alpha = 0.5) + \n    facet_grid(Light_num~.) + \n    labs(x = "Hours", y = "Cell density", title = "Diuron = 1")<\/pre>\n
<\/p>\n
In general, don\u2019t put too much information on a single plot. If you are using colours avoid lengthy legends (<7 items is ideal, <3 is excellent).<\/p>\n
If its getting too complex, think about what you are trying to communicate, then split your plot into several plots, one for each point.<\/p>\n
Finally, you might as well set-up to save publication quality pngs from the get go:<\/p>\n
g1 <- dat |>\n    filter(Diuron_num == 1) |>\n    ggplot() +\n    aes(x = hours, y = celld) + \n    geom_point(alpha = 0.5) + \n    facet_grid(Light_num~.) + \n    labs(x = "Hours", y = "Cell density", title = "Diuron = 1")\nggsave(g1, filename = "figure1.png", width = 6, height = 12, dpi = 600)<\/pre>\n
Play around with width and height to get the viewing ratio and size good for clear visualisation. A high dpi is needed for publication quality images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n
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\n
The default for styling plots should be for easy viewing on mobile devices.
\nMost digital interactions are via mobile these days. Even if you plan on viewing your plots on a desktop, a mobile friendly layout will make them more readable.
\nI recomm…<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3083,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack-related-posts":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400788"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3083"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400789,"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400788\/revisions\/400789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}