@anntzer I didn't find an example ofax.label_outer in the example gallery so wouldn't your PR be the occasion to add one? For example something like:

"""When plotting a grid of subplots that share axes, it might be interestingto display only some of the tick labels as well as some of the axes labels.The `label_outer` method provides a convenient way of dealing with thisby setting visible only the x tick and axis labels of the bottom row andthe y tick and axis labels of the left column."""importmatplotlib.pyplotaspltimportnumpyasnp# Dummy data to plott=np.linspace(0.0,5.0,501)s1=1.25*np.sin(2*np.pi*t)s2=np.exp(-t)s3=np.sin(4*np.pi*t)s4=np.sin(2*np.pi*t)*np.exp(-t)# Instantiate a 2x2 subplot grid with both shared x and y axes.fig,axs=plt.subplots(ncols=2,nrows=2,sharex=True,sharey=True)# Plot a data signal in each subplot and display:# - y tick and axis labels only for the first column;# - x tick and axis labels only for the last row.forax,s,titlein ((axs[0,0],s1,'Left labels ON'),                     (axs[0,1],s2,'All labels OFF'),                     (axs[1,0],s3,'Left & bottom labels ON'),                     (axs[1,1],s4,'Bottom labels ON')):ax.plot(t,s)ax.set_xlabel('This is x-axis')ax.set_ylabel('This is y-axis')ax.label_outer()# Display only the "relevant" tick & axis labels.ax.set_title(title)plt.show()

if one wants to add a simple stand-alone example. And if one doesn't like such a small stand-alone example, then the examplesubplots_demo may be a good place to add the same kind of example.

For the moment (without the current PR), the provided snippet results in

but this should improve with what you proposed.

I updatedsubplots_demo instead.

Nice! In fact, I hadn't directly proposed to modify the existing example in the case someone thought it would be useful to keep an example of the “cosmetricks” like

plt.setp([a.get_xticklabels()forainaxarr[0, :]],visible=False)plt.setp([a.get_yticklabels()forainaxarr[:,1]],visible=False)

which might give more fine-tuning possibilities if one doesn't simply want to label only the “outer” subplots. However if one had to choose, aslabel_outer will now also handle “inner” axis labels (as well as it also takes care of the possible offset texts), which the former “cosmetrick” doesn't, I really thinklabel_outer should be demonstrated over the former technic.

Actually the previous approach is "broken" in the sense that it will not handle offset texts (see#4445,#4446), so I'd rather just not have it in the examples here.

If I wasn't clear in my previous comment: I agree with you aboutlabel_outer being a better solution than the former approach because it takes care of the offset texts (as well as of the x- and y-labels with this PR).