8000 DOC: Recommend to use bare Figure instances for saving to file by timhoffm · Pull Request #30244 · matplotlib/matplotlib · GitHub
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DOC: Recommend to use bare Figure instances for saving to file #30244

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Jul 2, 2025
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DOC: Recommend to use bare Figure instances for saving to file #30244

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19 changes: 17 additions & 2 deletions doc/users/faq.rst
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Expand Up @@ -281,8 +281,23 @@ locators as desired because the two axes are independent.
Generate images without having a window appear
----------------------------------------------

Simply do not call `~matplotlib.pyplot.show`, and directly save the figure to
the desired format::
The recommended approach since matplotlib 3.1 is to explicitly create a Figure
instance::

from matplotlib.figure import Figure
fig = Figure()
ax = fig.subplots()
ax.plot([1, 2, 3])
fig.savefig('myfig.png')

This prevents any interaction with GUI frameworks and the window manager.

It's alternatively still possible to use the pyplot interface. Instead of
calling `matplotlib.pyplot.show`, call `matplotlib.pyplot.savefig`.

Additionally, you must ensure to close the figure after saving it. Not
closing the figure is a memory leak, because pyplot keeps references
to all not-yet-shown figures::

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.plot([1, 2, 3])
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