Interplay between .Visible='off' and axis(app.UIAxes, 'off') in App Designer

This is somewhere between a bug report and a request for help.

In App Designer on R2019a, I am seeing a confusing thing happen where executing an "axis off" command on UIAxes also sets the .Visible field to 'off' without actually making the plot invisible. I noticed this when I had a plot with "axis off" and which I want to appear and disappear at different times in the app execution, and that was getting all mixed up. See simple demo code below.

Is there a way to do the same thing as "axis off" -- meaning, removing x labels, ticks, and tick labels -- without setting off .Visible = 'off' in the presence of this issue/bug?

classdef test_visible < matlab.apps.AppBase

    % Properties that correspond to app components
    properties (Access = public)
        UIFigure  matlab.ui.Figure
        UIAxes    matlab.ui.control.UIAxes
    end

    % Callbacks that handle component events
    methods (Access = private)

        % Code that executes after component creation
        function startupFcn(app)
            
        x = linspace(0,2*pi,100);
        y = sin(x);
        
        plot(app.UIAxes, x, y, '-k');
        
        fprintf('Visibility = %s\n', app.UIAxes.Visible);
        
        axis(app.UIAxes, 'off');
        
        fprintf('Visibility = %s\n', app.UIAxes.Visible);
        
        end
    end

    % Component initialization
    methods (Access = private)

        % Create UIFigure and components
        function createComponents(app)

            % Create UIFigure and hide until all components are created
            app.UIFigure = uifigure('Visible', 'off');
            app.UIFigure.Position = [100 100 640 480];
            app.UIFigure.Name = 'UI Figure';

            % Create UIAxes
            app.UIAxes = uiaxes(app.UIFigure);
            title(app.UIAxes, 'Title')
            xlabel(app.UIAxes, 'X')
            ylabel(app.UIAxes, 'Y')
            app.UIAxes.Position = [33 53 530 392];

            % Show the figure after all components are created
            app.UIFigure.Visible = 'on';
        end
    end

    % App creation and deletion
    methods (Access = public)

        % Construct app
        function app = test_visible

            % Create UIFigure and components
            createComponents(app)

            % Register the app with App Designer
            registerApp(app, app.UIFigure)

            % Execute the startup function
            runStartupFcn(app, @startupFcn)

            if nargout == 0
                clear app
            end
        end

        % Code that executes before app deletion
        function delete(app)

            % Delete UIFigure when app is deleted
            delete(app.UIFigure)
        end
    end
end

Answer 1

[Hope Q]

I believe that you are not seeing the changes because they are all in the startup function. I adjusted the startup function with drawnow (to force an update draw of the figure within startup) and a pause to give it time to show.

       function startupFcn(app)
            x = linspace(0,2*pi,100);
            y = sin(x);
            plot(app.UIAxes, x, y, '-k');
            fprintf('Visibility = %s\n', app.UIAxes.Visible);
            
            app.UIAxes.Visible = 'off';
            fprintf('Visibility = %s\n', app.UIAxes.Visible);
            drawnow('nocallbacks')
            pause(1)

            app.UIAxes.Visible = 'on';
            fprintf('Visibility = %s\n', app.UIAxes.Visible);
       end

Answer 2

[Benjamin Kraus]

This is a long-standing behavior of axes that was inherited by UIAxes.

• On most graphics objects, Visible does what you think it should do: If you set Visible to 'off', the object and all its children become invisible.
• On axes, when you set Visible to 'off', the axes disappears, but its children remain visible. This is designed so you can hide the axes background, tick labels, and other aspects of the axes, but keep showing the graphics that are inside the axes. This is often used for "world building" type applications.

The easiest way to make the axes and all its children invisible is to put the axes into a panel, and then hide the panel.

p = uipanel;
ax = axes(p);
p = plot(ax, 1:10);
ax.Visible = 'off'; % Line still visible
p.Visible = 'off'; % Line disappears
p.Visible = 'on'; % Line reappears

Alternatively, if you are running R2019b or later, you can also use the tiledlayout command like you would a panel.

t = tiledlayout(1,1);
ax = axes(t);
p = plot(ax, 1:10);
ax.Visible = 'off'; % Line still visible
t.Visible = 'off'; % Line disappears
t.Visible = 'on'; % Line reappears