How to Use ggsave to Quickly Save ggplot2 Plots

You can use the ggsave() function to quickly save plots created by ggplot2.

This function uses the following basic syntax:

ggsave(
  filename,
  plot = last_plot(),
  device = NULL,
  path = NULL,
  scale = 1,
  width = NA,
  height = NA,
  units = c("in", "cm", "mm", "px"),")
  ...
)

where:

filename: File name to use when saving plot (e.g. “my_plot.pdf”)
plot: The plot to save. Default is to save last plot displayed.
device: Device to use
path: Path to save file to
scale: Multiplicative scaling factor
width: width of plot in units specified
height: height of plot in units specified
units: Units to use when specifying size of plot

The following examples show how to use the ggsave() function in practice to save the following scatter plot created in ggplot2:

library(ggplot2)

#create data frame
df <- data.frame(team=rep(c('A', 'B'), each=5),
                 assists=c(1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10),
                 points=c(4, 8, 12, 10, 18, 25, 20, 28, 33, 35))

#create scatter plot
ggplot(df, aes(x=assists, y=points)) + 
  geom_point(aes(color=team), size=3)

Example 1: Use ggsave() to Save Plot with Default Settings

We can use the following syntax with ggsave() to save this scatter plot to a PDF file called my_plot.pdf with all of the default settings:

library(ggplot2)

#save scatter plot as PDF file
ggsave('my_plot.pdf')

Since we didn’t specify a path or a size for our plot, the scatter plot will simply be saved as a PDF in the current working directory with the size of the current graphics device.

If I navigate to my current working directory, I can view the PDF file:

I can see that the plot has been saved as a PDF file with the size of the current graphics device.

Example 2: Use ggsave() to Save Plot with Custom Settings

We can use the following syntax with ggsave() to save this scatter plot to a PDF file called my_plot2.pdf with a size of 3 inches wide by 6 inches tall:

library(ggplot2)

#save scatter plot as PDF file with specific dimensions
ggsave('my_plot2.pdf', width=3, height=6, units='in')

If I navigate to my current working directory, I can view the PDF file:

I can see that the plot has been saved as a PDF file with the dimensions that I specified.

Note: In these examples we chose to save the plots from ggplot2 as PDF files, but you can also specify jpeg, png, or other file formats.