ggplot2: How to place plot legend below caption

Question

I want to place the plot legend below my plot AND my caption. While I'm able to change most stylistic aspects of the caption - for instance, using plot.caption - I haven't found a way to change the positioning of the caption.

Here's what I have so far:

ggplot(iris, aes(x=Sepal.Length, y=Sepal.Width, color=Species)) + 
      + geom_point(size=6) + labs(caption = "Note: Dots are closer than they appear") + 
      theme_minimal() + theme(legend.position = c("bottom"))

Is there a way to do this or some work around?

Answer 1

You can reposition the caption over the legend

Maybe you could try using lemon::reposition_legend.

https://github.com/stefanedwards/lemon

A comparison of the two against a default is given below:

library(ggplot2)

library(patchwork)

p <- ggplot(iris, aes(x = Sepal.Length, y = Sepal.Width, color = Species)) +
  geom_point(size =6) +
  labs(caption = "Note: Dots are closer than they appear") +
  theme_minimal() +
  theme(legend.position = "bottom")

p + labs(title = "Before") +

  p + theme(plot.caption.position = "plot",
        plot.caption = element_text(vjust = 40)) +
  labs(title = "Vjust") +
  
  lemon::reposition_legend(
    p + labs(title = "Lemon"),
    position = "bottom")

enter image description here