Defaults & Options: Define your style in Grapher

Updated March 10, 2026 19:25

Grapher gives you full control over every aspect of your visualizations and most of the properties used to do this can also be defined as defaults. Define your preferred font, line, symbol, and fill styles in Grapher to simplify generating consistent, high quality visuals that align with your visualization style.

Use Options to set global styles

Properties defined in the options dialog are applied to all new objects. This makes options a great place to define your most common style preferences. For example, if you change the Font properties to 16 point Copperplate Gothic, all new text including labels and titles will use those font properties.

*Set the global defaults by clicking the **File | Options** command. In this example, the default font properties are changed so all future text uses a 16pt Copperplate Gothic Light font style.*

To set global default options

Click the File | Options command.
On the left side of the Options dialog, click on Line, Fill, Symbol, Font, or Digitize Format.
Set the desired options on the right side of the dialog.
Click OK and all future objects that have that property automatically use the format you specified.

Use Defaults to set individual object properties

Defaults are used to set plot specific properties that may differ from the global defaults. For example, you may wish for your plot titles to use a larger, bold font while all other text uses the global default set in Options.

Set plot specific options by clicking the **File | Defaults** command. In this example, the 2D Graph is selected and the Title font properties have been changed. All 2D graphs will use the title properties defined here.

To set properties for an individual object type,

Click the File | Defaults command.
On the left side of the dialog, select the object type, such as Line Type Plots.
On the right side of the dialog, set any property listed, such as the symbol, clipping, or to always include fill.
After making any changes, click OK to save the new default.

Use Options to set global styles

Use Defaults to set individual object properties

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