README

Dr. Alex Bajcz, Quantitative Ecologist, Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center 2025-07-29

Quick Start Guide

To begin using the ggplot.plus package, you’ll first need to install it from GitHub using the devtools package:

# install.packages("devtools")  #IF NOT ALREADY INSTALLED
devtools::install_github("https://github.com/MAISRC/ggplot_plus") #<--NOTE THE _ INSTEAD OF THE . IN THE PACKAGE NAME.

Then, load it alongside ggplot2:

# install.packages("ggplot2")  #IF NOT ALREADY INSTALLED
library(ggplot2)
library(ggplot.plus)

Once loaded, you can start layering in the “plus” tools to improve your plot design with minimal effort.

Using the tools

Just by loading ggplot.plus, you will switch your session’s default color palette to one that is more broadly accessible–there’s no need to call palettes_plus() to alter this palette unless you want or need to:

#A BASIC GGPLOT SCATTERPLOT, EXCEPT USING ggplot.plus's DEFAULT COLOR PALETTE.
ggplot(iris, 
       mapping = aes(x = Petal.Length, 
                     y = Sepal.Length)) +
  geom_point(mapping = aes(color = Species))

To access the tweaks the package makes to ggplot2’s common geometries (“geoms”), convert your geom_*() calls into geom_plus() calls, including the name of the geom for the geom arguments:

ggplot(iris, 
       mapping = aes(x = Petal.Length, 
                     y = Sepal.Length)) +
  geom_plus(geom = "point", #<--DIFF FUNCTION, NEW GEOM INPUT.
            mapping = aes(color = Species))

You can already see that this is a very different graph than what ggplot2 would produce by default!

Everything else the package offers gets turned on when you add (using ggplot2’s usual + operator) the associated function to your ggplot() command:

ggplot(iris, 
       mapping = aes(x = Petal.Length, 
                     y = Sepal.Length)) +
  geom_plus(geom = "point", 
            mapping = aes(color = Species)) + 
  theme_plus() + #<-OVERHAULS THEME
  scale_x_continuous_plus("Petal length (cm)",
                          thin_labels = TRUE) + #<--OVERHAULS AXIS BREAKS AND LIMITS (FOR CONTINUOUS AXES ONLY!) 
  scale_y_continuous_plus("Sepal length (cm)") + #<--SAME FOR Y AXIS.
  yaxis_title_plus() + #<--RELOCATES AND RE-ORIENTS Y AXIS TITLE.
  gridlines_plus() + #<--ADDS THOUGHTFUL GRIDLINES, IF YOU *REALLY* WANT THEM.
  labs(color = expression(italic("Iris")*" species")) #<--THIS IS BASE GGPLOT2, BUT A NICE TOUCH!

The above graphs demonstrates how ggplot.plus’s tools rethink the default design features of ggplot2. The intention is to yield a more opinionated, design-principles-guided product more quickly so you need to spend less time fine-tuning and polishing your graphs for publication than you might otherwise need to.

However, there’s a lot more to know! If you want to dive deeper, please check out the full package guide.