In catplot, `sharey=False` passed to `facet_kws` is ignored

Author: whlinaaCreated Jun 17, 2022Updated Jul 19, 2026

Labelsmod:categoricalux

seaborn version: 0.11.2

I found that in catplot, the argument sharey=False passed to facet_kws is ignored. I understand that if sharey=False is passed as an argument to the catplot, it will have effect, but I still find this behavior strange, considering the fact that for relplot, sharey=False will have effect when passed to facet_kws. The following illustrates the problem:

python

import seaborn as sns
tips = sns.load_dataset("tips")

sns.catplot(
    data=tips,
    x='sex',
    kind='count',
    col='smoker',
    facet_kws={'sharey':False}  # will be ignored... why?
    )

sns.catplot(
    data=tips,
    x='sex',
    kind='count',
    col='smoker',
    sharey=False, # it works
    )

sns.relplot(
    data=tips,
    x='size',
    y='tip',
    col='sex',
    kind='line',
    facet_kws={'sharey':False} # it works
)

y-axis still shared catplot_sharey

y-axis not shared catplot_!sharey

y-axis not shared relplot_!sharey

Source: mwaskom/seaborn

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