How do I change the number of decimals in the axis ticks?

When plotting, the number of decimals in the axis ticks is set by default, and they vary depending on the number, like in the y-axis in the picture:

I want to have them set to 2 by default, so that it will look like this:

For now, I have solved it in a bad way by stating

    ax.YTickLabel={'-0.15','-0.10','-0.05','0.00','0.05','0.10','0.15','0.20','0.25','0.30'};

in other words, the ticks are dumb and will not change if the values of the axis change. There must be a better way of handeling this so that, irrespective of the values there will be a fixed set of decimals?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

ax.YAxis.TickLabelFormat = '%.2f';

Note: this facility is quite new. It was named something different and hidden in R2014b; I do not recall whether it was named this in R2015a or R2015b.

[Philippe Corner]

Hi Walter, this would show the number of decimals we need but it changes for example from:

6.5 x10^5 to 6.5000 x10^5

How could we change from

6.5 x10^5 to 650000?

Thanks in advance!

[Walter Roberson]

If you do not want any decimal places shown, then

ax.YAxis.TickLabelFormat = '%d';

[Paul Wintz]

Just to clarify, using

ax.YAxis.TickLabelFormat = '%d';

doesn't remove non-integer tick marks. You simply end up with each tick label rounded to the nearest integer.

Answer 2

[Sergio Yanez-Pagans]

This might be more useful given that it only shows relevant ticks and labels (it doesn't only change the format of the label). You'll need to have at least MATLAB 2016:

n_dig = 2 % number of significant digits you want
ctick = get(gca, 'xTick');
xticks(unique(round(ctick,n_dig)));

Hope this is useful!

[Walter Roberson]

This will not help with the problem being asked about.

By default, the labeling omits trailing 0's, so .30 would be labeled with .3 and .35 would be labeled with .35 . The question was about how to have them both show up with the same number of decimal places -- so as .30 and .35 .

[Paulo Providencia]

Right, this did not solve the problem

[Paulo Providencia]

This proposal has worked for me: https://superuser.com/questions/1206634/matlab-how-to-put-the-same-number-of-decimal-places-in-the-axes