How to recover matplotlib defaults after setting stylesheet

Adding to the answer by CT Zhu, the differences between the inline and matplotlib defaults are (for each item that is different, a list with the to respective values is given):

inline_default_rc = dict(mpl.rcParams)
default_rc = dict(mpl.rcParamsDefault)
print( {k:[v,default_rc[k]] for k,v in inline_default_rc.items() if v != default_rc[k]} )

{'figure.dpi': [72.0, 100.0], 'figure.edgecolor': [(1, 1, 1, 0), 'white'], 'figure.facecolor': [(1, 1, 1, 0), 'white'], 'figure.figsize': [[6.0, 4.0], [6.4, 4.8]], 'figure.subplot.bottom': [0.125, 0.11], 'interactive': [True, False]}

You can use this to fine tune your plots.

You should be able to set it back to default by:

import matplotlib as mpl
mpl.rcParams.update(mpl.rcParamsDefault)

In ipython, things are a little different, especially with inline backend:

In [1]:

%matplotlib inline
In [2]:

import matplotlib as mpl
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
In [3]:

inline_rc = dict(mpl.rcParams)
In [4]:

plt.plot(range(10))
Out[4]:
[<matplotlib.lines.Line2D at 0x72d2510>]

In [5]:

mpl.rcParams.update(mpl.rcParamsDefault)
plt.plot(range(10))
Out[5]:
[<matplotlib.lines.Line2D at 0x7354730>]

In [6]:

mpl.rcParams.update(inline_rc)
plt.plot(range(10))
Out[6]:
[<matplotlib.lines.Line2D at 0x75a8e10>] 

Basically, %matplotlib inline uses its own rcParams. You can grab that from the source, but the arguably easier way is probably just save the rcParams as inline_rc after %matplotlib inline cell magic in this example, and reuse that later.

There actually is a default. But it's not listed under plt.style.available. Simply run :

plt.style.use('default')

It returns the style to the default Matplotlib settings in, for instance, Jupyter Notebook.