The :file:`matplotlibrc` file

matplotlib uses :file:`matplotlibrc` configuration files to customize all kinds of properties, which we call rc settings or rc parameters. You can control the defaults of almost every property in matplotlib: figure size and dpi, line width, color and style, axes, axis and grid properties, text and font properties and so on. matplotlib looks for :file:`matplotlibrc` in three locations, in the following order:

1. :file:`matplotlibrc` in the current working directory, usually used for specific customizations that you do not want to apply elsewhere.
2. :file:`.matplotlib/matplotlibrc`, for the user's default customizations. See :ref:`locating-matplotlib-config-dir`.
3. :file:`{INSTALL}/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlibrc`, where :file:`{INSTALL}` is something like :file:`/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages` on Linux, and maybe :file:`C:\\Python25\\Lib\\site-packages` on Windows. Every time you install matplotlib, this file will be overwritten, so if you want your customizations to be saved, please move this file to you :file:`.matplotlib` directory.

To display where the currently active :file:`matplotlibrc` file was loaded from, one can do the following:

>>> import matplotlib
>>> matplotlib.matplotlib_fname()
'/home/foo/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc'

See below for a sample :ref:`matplotlibrc file<matplotlibrc-sample>`.

Dynamic rc settings

You can also dynamically change the default rc settings in a python script or interactively from the python shell. All of the rc settings are stored in a dictionary-like variable called :data:`matplotlib.rcParams`, which is global to the matplotlib package. rcParams can be modified directly, for example:

import matplotlib as mpl
mpl.rcParams['lines.linewidth'] = 2
mpl.rcParams['lines.color'] = 'r'

Matplotlib also provides a couple of convenience functions for modifying rc settings. The :func:`matplotlib.rc` command can be used to modify multiple settings in a single group at once, using keyword arguments:

import matplotlib as mpl
mpl.rc('lines', linewidth=2, color='r')

There :func:`matplotlib.rcdefaults` command will restore the standard matplotlib default settings.

There is some degree of validation when setting the values of rcParams, see :mod:`matplotlib.rcsetup` for details.