List of all available matplotlib backends

Question

The current backend name is accessible via

>>> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt>>> plt.get_backend()
'GTKAgg'

Is there a way to get a list of all backends that can be used on a particular machine?

• Trevor Boyd Smith: FYI as of matplotlib version 3.x the default pip install does not install an interactive backend so you need to also install one of the interative backends like PyQt4, or PyQt5 see matplotlib.org/3.3.3/users/installing.html#install-requirements for more info about supported interactive backends.

Answer 1

Matplotlib 3.9 and above has a backend registry that you can use to query backends in various ways:

from matplotlib.backends import backend_registry
# interactive backends
backend_registry.list_builtin(matplotlib.backends.BackendFilter.INTERACTIVE)
# noninteractive backends
backend_registry.list_builtin(matplotlib.backends.BackendFilter.NON_INTERACTIVE)
# all backends built into Matplotlib
backend_registry.list_builtin()
# all registered backends
backend_registry.list_all()

In older versions of Matplotlib you can use the lists

matplotlib.rcsetup.interactive_bk
matplotlib.rcsetup.non_interactive_bk
matplotlib.rcsetup.all_backends

the third being the concatenation of the former two. These will be remove in version 3.11.

Answer 2

Here is a modification of the script posted previously. It finds all supported backends, validates them and measures their fps. On OSX it crashes python when it comes to tkAgg, so use at your own risk ;)

from __future__ import print_function, division, absolute_import
from pylab import *
import time
import matplotlib.backends
import matplotlib.pyplot as p
import os.path
def is_backend_module(fname):
 """Identifies if a filename is a matplotlib backend module"""
 return fname.startswith('backend_') and fname.endswith('.py')
def backend_fname_formatter(fname): 
 """Removes the extension of the given filename, then takes away the leading 'backend_'."""
 return os.path.splitext(fname)[0][8:]
# get the directory where the backends live
backends_dir = os.path.dirname(matplotlib.backends.__file__)
# filter all files in that directory to identify all files which provide a backend
backend_fnames = filter(is_backend_module, os.listdir(backends_dir))
backends = [backend_fname_formatter(fname) for fname in backend_fnames]
print("supported backends: \t" + str(backends))
# validate backends
backends_valid = []
for b in backends:
 try:
 p.switch_backend(b)
 backends_valid += [b]
 except:
 continue
print("valid backends: \t" + str(backends_valid))
# try backends performance
for b in backends_valid:
 ion()
 try:
 p.switch_backend(b)
 clf()
 tstart = time.time() # for profiling
 x = arange(0,2*pi,0.01) # x-array
 line, = plot(x,sin(x))
 for i in arange(1,200):
 line.set_ydata(sin(x+i/10.0)) # update the data
 draw() # redraw the canvas
 print(b + ' FPS: \t' , 200/(time.time()-tstart))
 ioff()
 except:
 print(b + " error :(")

---

To just see supported interactive backends see:

#!/usr/bin/env python
from __future__ import print_function
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib
backends = matplotlib.rcsetup.interactive_bk
# validate backends
backends_valid = []
for b in backends:
 try:
 plt.switch_backend(b)
 backends_valid += [b]
 except:
 continue
print(backends_valid)

• Matěj Šmíd: The scripts crashes for me (gist.github.com/palmstrom/6039823), but works well when run under Spyder IDE.
• rc0r: What are typical results of this benchmark? FPS numbers anybody?
• Trevor Boyd Smith: so awesome! live drawing! calculates framerate and prints it! really useful to figure out which backend is fastest on your machine.
• Trevor Boyd Smith: to run the script under python2, make the first line after shebang the from __future__ import print_function, division, absolute_import. (i was going to edit the code in the question... but python2 is so bloody old at this point... i feel it is bad manners to add that sort of cruft... i feel like it would just be encouraging bad behavior.)
• Teun M.: Nice snippet! Usage of "from pylab import *" is discouraged, though: (matplotlib.org/stable/api/pylab.html).

Answer 3

You can pretend to put a wrong backend argument, then it will return you a ValueError with the list of valid matplotlib backends, like this:

Input:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('WRONG_ARG')

Output:

ValueError: Unrecognized backend string 'test': valid strings are ['GTK3Agg', 'GTK3Cairo', 'MacOSX', 'nbAgg', 'Qt4Agg', 'Qt4Cairo', 'Qt5Agg', 'Qt
5Cairo', 'TkAgg', 'TkCairo', 'WebAgg', 'WX', 'WXAgg', 'WXCairo', 'agg', 'cairo', 'pdf', 'pgf', 'ps', 'svg', 'template']

Answer 4

There is the hard-coded list mentioned by Sven, but to find every backend which Matplotlib can use (based on the current implementation for setting up a backend) the matplotlib/backends folder can be inspected.

The following code does this:

import matplotlib.backends
import os.path
def is_backend_module(fname):
 """Identifies if a filename is a matplotlib backend module"""
 return fname.startswith('backend_') and fname.endswith('.py')
def backend_fname_formatter(fname): 
 """Removes the extension of the given filename, then takes away the leading 'backend_'."""
 return os.path.splitext(fname)[0][8:]
# get the directory where the backends live
backends_dir = os.path.dirname(matplotlib.backends.__file__)
# filter all files in that directory to identify all files which provide a backend
backend_fnames = filter(is_backend_module, os.listdir(backends_dir))
backends = [backend_fname_formatter(fname) for fname in backend_fnames]
print backends

Answer 5

You can also see some documentation for a few backends here:

http://matplotlib.org/api/index_backend_api.html

the pages lists just a few backends, some of them don't have a proper documentation:

matplotlib.backend_bases
matplotlib.backends.backend_gtkagg
matplotlib.backends.backend_qt4agg
matplotlib.backends.backend_wxagg
matplotlib.backends.backend_pdf
matplotlib.dviread
matplotlib.type1font

• Leandro: I'm sorry, I thought that the above answers covered the subject, but should have the link as reference, that's why I posted. I mean no harm, I'm a noob.

Answer 6

What about this?

%matplotlib --list
Available matplotlib backends: ['tk', 'gtk', 'gtk3', 'wx', 'qt4', 'qt5', 'qt', 'osx', 'nbagg', 'notebook', 'agg', 'svg', 'pdf', 'ps', 'inline', 'ipympl', 'widget']

Answer 7

You could look at the following folder for a list of possible backends...

/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/matplotlib/backends
/usr/lib64/Python2.6/site-packages/matplotlib/backends