How do I find the handle to the colorbar for a specific axes

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I would like to know how to programatically find the handle to the colorbar for a specific axis in a figure which contains several subplots which each of which might or might not have an associated colorbar. Since colorbars are children of the figure it is not obvious to me how I get the handle of the correct colorbar. I can easily get a list of all of the colorbar handles, but I do not see any property value which indicates which bar goes with which axis.

Accepted Answer

Dave White
Dave White on 31 Jul 2023
8 years late, but you can also access the hidden Colorbar property 'Axes' which references the peer axis:
cbar=colorbar;
cbar.Axes
  1 Comment
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 1 Aug 2023
Likewise, if you have an axes handle, then it has a Colorbar property
plot(rand(1,20))
ax = gca
ax =
Axes with properties: XLim: [0 20] YLim: [0 1] XScale: 'linear' YScale: 'linear' GridLineStyle: '-' Position: [0.1300 0.1100 0.7750 0.8150] Units: 'normalized' Show all properties
cbar = colorbar;
cbar.Axes == ax
ans = logical
1
ax.Colorbar == cbar
ans = logical
1

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More Answers (2)

Morteza
Morteza on 19 Aug 2015
use the specific term for each color bar before making them like:
t = colorbar('peer',gca,'Tag','colorbar1');
get(t)
  3 Comments
Michael G. Baker
Michael G. Baker on 27 Nov 2018
C = findall(gcf,'type','ColorBar');
if isempty(C)
display('No ColorBar.');
end
ColorBars are apparently children of the Figure object, rather than the Axes. I'm not sure how Matlab keeps the colorbars associated with the relevant axes, though. If I need to modify positions and settings later on, I set the object Tags to the same value and use the findall command.
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 1 Aug 2023
If I recall correctly, colorbars used to be children of axes, but are now children of the parent object instead.

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Matt J
Matt J on 17 Mar 2022
Edited: Matt J on 18 Mar 2022
Here is an excruciatingly roundabout method.
function [Hcb,tf]=getColorbars(hAxes)
%Return colorbar handles for axes with colorbars, and optionally a logical
%indicator array telling which axes have colorbars.
%
%IN:
%
% hAxes: an array of axes handles
%
%OUT:
%
% Hcb: an array of colorbar handles corresponding to the elements of
% hAxes. If hAxes(i) has no colorbar, then Hcb(i) will be
% an empty GraphicsPlaceHolder.
%
% tf: a logical array indicating which elements of hAxes have
% colorbars.
Hcb=gobjects(size(hAxes));
tf=false(size(hAxes));
N=numel(Hcb);
for i=1:N
Hfig=ancestor(hAxes(i),'figure');
before=numel(findobj(Hfig,'Type','colorbar'));
colorbar(hAxes(i),'off');
after= numel(findobj(Hfig,'Type','colorbar'));
if after<before %colorbar was present
Hcb(i)=colorbar(hAxes(i));
tf(i)=1;
end
end
end

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