kx-plot

One-line matplotlib plots and themes for notebooks and scripts.

kx is a small, plain-Python package with .mplstyle themes, palettes and colourmaps. It needs nothing beyond matplotlib, numpy and pandas and works offline, so it also runs in Kaggle competition notebooks.

Install

pip install kx-plot

import kx; kx.use('dark')

Kaggle

Attach the dataset instead (Add Input → Datasets → vhrabar/kx-plot), then:

import sys; sys.path.append('/kaggle/input/datasets/vhrabar/kx-plot')
import kx; kx.use('dark')

Usage

kx.use('light', palette='okabe', cmap='cividis')   # notebook default: theme, palette, colormap
kx.plot(x, y, z, 'scatter-grid-leg')               # spec: kind-theme-flag-...
kx.plot(x, y, 'bar-paper')                         # a theme in the spec applies to this plot only
with kx.context('paper'): ...                      # or to every plot in the block
kx.save('fig.png')                                 # to /kaggle/working on Kaggle, else the current folder
for ax, col in zip(kx.grid(3), df.columns):        # a figure of 3 panels, a flat array of axes
    kx.plot(df, col, spec='hist', ax=ax)
kx.plot(df, 'month', 'y2025', 'bar')               # DataFrame columns by name
kx.plot(x, y, 'line', linewidth=3)                 # other keywords go to matplotlib
kx.plot(df, 'value', spec='kde', by='group')       # one density curve per group
kx.plot(df.value, spec='box', by=df.group)         # one box per group (also ridge, violin, qq)

Token	Values
kind	line step area band scatter bar barh hist kde ridge ecdf box violin
	strip qq count crosstab hexbin heat missing nullmap
theme	dark light paper science talk poster thesis
flags	grid leg legout tight rot wrap logx logy logxy symlogy zero eq pct
	si; per kind: stack norm cum date mk sort ann mean median nocb sym
	logc corr all

stack works with area, bar, barh and hist. norm is a 100% stack for area and a density (area 1) for hist. cum makes hist cumulative; hist-norm-cum is the CDF. hist puts every series on the same bins, so the bars line up.

Unknown tokens raise an error instead of being guessed, with the closest valid tokens as a hint. Everything is inspectable: kx.grammar(), kx.grammar('area'), kx.parse('leg-scatter'), kx.show('dark'), kx.source('scatter').

Tables

kx.load('passengers') is a demo table with numbers, categories and NaNs to try these on.

kx.missing(df)                                     # share of NaNs per column, the most missing on top
kx.plot(df, 'nullmap-sort')                        # where the NaNs are: one pixel row per table row
kx.plot(df, 'heat-corr-ann')                       # correlations of the numeric columns, -1 to 1
kx.plot(df, 'heat')                                # any numeric DataFrame or 2-D array as coloured cells
kx.plot(df, 'pclass', spec='count', by='survived') # rows per category, split by a second column
kx.plot(df, 'pclass', 'port', 'crosstab-norm-ann') # how often each pair of categories occurs
kx.plot(df, 'age', 'fare', 'hexbin-logc')          # points per hexagon; with a z, its mean per hexagon

heat, missing and nullmap take the whole table and no column names; kx.plot(df[cols], 'heat') for some columns. wrap breaks long tick labels onto several lines.

rcParams can be overridden in kx.use with __ for dots: kx.use('dark', figure__figsize=(8, 4)).

Every kind, option, flag and config, with its output, is in the Example Usage notebook.

Palettes

Palettes for kx.use(theme, palette=...), they swap only the colours; a theme's other cycled properties (such as paper's linestyles) stay.

Name	Source
okabe	Okabe & Ito (2008)
tolbright tolvibrant tollight	Paul Tol
tolhc tolmc	Paul Tol
petroff6 petroff8 petroff10	Petroff (2021)
tab10 tab20 tableaucb	Tableau
set1 set2 dark2 paired	ColorBrewer
ibm	IBM Design Colors

kx.palette('okabe') returns the hex codes. A list of colours works too: palette=['#264653', '#e9c46a'].

Colourmaps

Colourmaps for kx.use(theme, cmap=...) colour continuous values, such as a numeric z in scatter. Without cmap, the theme's own default applies. Add _r to any name to reverse it, e.g. cmap="thermal_r".

Name	Type
viridis magma plasma inferno cividis	Sequential, perceptually uniform
turbo	Sequential, rainbow
blues greys	Sequential, ColorBrewer
coolwarm	Diverging
rdbu	Diverging, ColorBrewer
berlin managua vanimo	Diverging, dark centre
twilight	Cyclic, for angles and phases
thermal haline deep	Sequential, cmocean (vendored)
balance	Diverging, cmocean (vendored)
batlow lipari hawaii oslo davos	Sequential, Crameri (vendored)
vik roma bam cork	Diverging, Crameri (vendored)
romaO	Cyclic, Crameri (vendored)

kx.cmaps() lists the ones that are available in the installed matplotlib as those implemented in matplotlib 3.10 or newer are not vendored.

License

Released under the MIT License. See LICENSE.

Copyright © 2026 Vedran Hrabar

Vendored palettes and colourmaps keep their own licences; see kx/styles/palettes/LICENCES.md and kx/styles/cmaps/LICENCES.md.