How to add hovering annotations to a plot

I am using matplotlib to make scatter plots. Each point on the scatter plot is associated with a named object. I would like to be able to see the name of an object when I hover my cursor over the point on the scatter plot associated with that object. In particular, it would be nice to be able to quickly see the names of the points that are outliers. The closest thing I have been able to find while searching here is the annotate command, but that appears to create a fixed label on the plot. Unfortunately, with the number of points that I have, the scatter plot would be unreadable if I labeled each point. Does anyone know of a way to create labels that only appear when the cursor hovers in the vicinity of that point?

Answer

It seems none of the other answers here actually answer the question. So here is a code that uses a scatter and shows an annotation upon hovering over the scatter points.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np; np.random.seed(1)

x = np.random.rand(15)
y = np.random.rand(15)
names = np.array(list("ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO"))
c = np.random.randint(1,5,size=15)

norm = plt.Normalize(1,4)
cmap = plt.cm.RdYlGn

fig,ax = plt.subplots()
sc = plt.scatter(x,y,c=c, s=100, cmap=cmap, norm=norm)

annot = ax.annotate("", xy=(0,0), xytext=(20,20),textcoords="offset points",
                    bbox=dict(boxstyle="round", fc="w"),
                    arrowprops=dict(arrowstyle="->"))
annot.set_visible(False)

def update_annot(ind):

    pos = sc.get_offsets()[ind["ind"][0]]
    annot.xy = pos
    text = "{}, {}".format(" ".join(list(map(str,ind["ind"]))), 
                           " ".join([names[n] for n in ind["ind"]]))
    annot.set_text(text)
    annot.get_bbox_patch().set_facecolor(cmap(norm(c[ind["ind"][0]])))
    annot.get_bbox_patch().set_alpha(0.4)


def hover(event):
    vis = annot.get_visible()
    if event.inaxes == ax:
        cont, ind = sc.contains(event)
        if cont:
            update_annot(ind)
            annot.set_visible(True)
            fig.canvas.draw_idle()
        else:
            if vis:
                annot.set_visible(False)
                fig.canvas.draw_idle()

fig.canvas.mpl_connect("motion_notify_event", hover)

plt.show()

Because people also want to use this solution for a line plot instead of a scatter, the following would be the same solution for plot (which works slightly differently).

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np; np.random.seed(1)

x = np.sort(np.random.rand(15))
y = np.sort(np.random.rand(15))
names = np.array(list("ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO"))

norm = plt.Normalize(1,4)
cmap = plt.cm.RdYlGn

fig,ax = plt.subplots()
line, = plt.plot(x,y, marker="o")

annot = ax.annotate("", xy=(0,0), xytext=(-20,20),textcoords="offset points",
                    bbox=dict(boxstyle="round", fc="w"),
                    arrowprops=dict(arrowstyle="->"))
annot.set_visible(False)

def update_annot(ind):
    x,y = line.get_data()
    annot.xy = (x[ind["ind"][0]], y[ind["ind"][0]])
    text = "{}, {}".format(" ".join(list(map(str,ind["ind"]))), 
                           " ".join([names[n] for n in ind["ind"]]))
    annot.set_text(text)
    annot.get_bbox_patch().set_alpha(0.4)


def hover(event):
    vis = annot.get_visible()
    if event.inaxes == ax:
        cont, ind = line.contains(event)
        if cont:
            update_annot(ind)
            annot.set_visible(True)
            fig.canvas.draw_idle()
        else:
            if vis:
                annot.set_visible(False)
                fig.canvas.draw_idle()

fig.canvas.mpl_connect("motion_notify_event", hover)

plt.show()

In case someone is looking for a solution for lines in twin axes, refer to How to make labels appear when hovering over a point in multiple axis?

In case someone is looking for a solution for bar plots, please refer to e.g. this answer.