MATLAB: How to customize a figure toolbar by removing certain buttons

buttonbuttonsfigureMATLABmissingtoolbartooltipstring

I would like to customize the MATLAB figure window by having the ability to remove certain buttons from the figure toolbar. For instance, I do not want my figure windows to have a "Save Figure" button.

Best Answer

For releases prior to MATLAB 7.0 (R14) refer to the Related Solution listed at the bottom of the page.

For MATLAB 7.0 (R14) and all subsequent releases:

The following code will help illustrate how this can be achieved.

% If I want to disable the Save Figure button on the toolbar
figure
a = findall(gcf)
b = findall(a,'ToolTipString','Save Figure')
set(b,'Visible','Off')

FIGURE generates an empty figure window.

FINDALL gets a list of all graphics objects in the current figure window and assigns it to the variable “a”

Note that as you move your mouse across the various figure toolbar buttons, a yellow colored ToolTipString shows up indicating what each figure toolbar button does. This ToolTipString will be used to customize the figure toolbar by removing certain buttons. In the code above, we execute a second FINDALL command to find all objects assigned to the variable “a” that have the ToolTipString "Save Figure", and assign that to the variable “b”

SET sets all instances of Save Figure that are returned to “b” as OFF. These instances are no longer visible resulting in the "Save Figure" button no longer showing up in the figure toolbar.

It is extremely important that you spell the ToolTipString correctly and just as it appears when you move your mouse over a figure toolbar button. A list of ToolTipString (s) available in MATLAB 7.0.4 (R14SP2) are included below as a reference:

uipushtool buttons

(1) Show Plot Tools

(2) Hide Plot Tools

(3) Print Figure

(4) Save Figure

(5) Open File

(6) New Figure

uitoggletool buttons

(1) Insert Legend

(2) Insert Colorbar

(3) Data Cursor

(4) Rotate 3D

(5) Pan

(6) Zoom Out

(7) Zoom In

(8) Edit Plot

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Are there hot keys (shortcuts) that enable interactive mouse controlled pan and zoom for a figure

Here's a way that works by using the uimenu's accelerator option. There will be a menu you could use or ctrl + letter to activate:

function HotKeyAcc
% A figure
fig = figure('menubar','none');
% Add menus with Accelerators
mymenu = uimenu('Parent',fig,'Label','Hot Keys');
uimenu('Parent',mymenu,'Label','Zoom','Accelerator','z','Callback',@(src,evt)zoom(fig,'on'));
uimenu('Parent',mymenu,'Label','Rotate','Accelerator','r','Callback',@(src,evt)rotate3d(fig,'on'));
uimenu('Parent',mymenu,'Label','Pan','Accelerator','p','Callback',@(src,evt)pan(fig,'on'));
% Some plot
plot(rand(1,50))
end

MATLAB: Figure editing shortcut missing

Edit:

You can open the plot tools with the plottools function. You can probably add this as a custom button, but otherwise the code below should work.

hFig=figure;
plottools(hFig)
%or put this in your startup.m (untested, might need modification)
%make sure add_plottools_button is on your Matlab path
try %#ok

    if ~verLessThan('matlab','9.5')
        set(groot,'defaultFigureCreateFcn',...
            @(fig,~)add_plottools_button(fig));
    end
end
function add_plottools_button(fig)
persistent icon
if isempty(icon)
    % Read an image
    img = imread(fullfile(matlabroot,...
        'toolbox','matlab','icons','tool_plottools_show.png'));
    icon = double(img)/double(uint16( inf));
end
t = findall(fig,'type','uitoolbar','tag','FigureToolBar');
if isempty(t)
    %no toolbar exists, create one
    t = uitoolbar('Parent',fig);
end
% Create a uipushtool in the toolbar
uipushtool(t,'TooltipString','Open plot tools',...
    'ClickedCallback',...
    @(obj,~)plottools(ancestor(obj,'figure')),...
    'CData',icon)
end

Original answer:

You probably mean the controls that you can add back to your figure with addToolbarExplorationButtons.

Alternatively, you could add the code below to your startup.m to reverse the change by default.

try %#ok
    if ~verLessThan('matlab','9.5')
        set(groot,'defaultFigureCreateFcn',...
            @(fig,~)addToolbarExplorationButtons(fig));
        set(groot,'defaultAxesCreateFcn',  ...
            @(ax,~)set(ax.Toolbar,'Visible','off'));
    end
end

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Are there hot keys (shortcuts) that enable interactive mouse controlled pan and zoom for a figure

MATLAB: Figure editing shortcut missing

Related Question