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Documentation around Scattermap Markers is out of date and confusing #5156
Description
Intent
I want to add markers with different symbols to my plotly graph object Scattermap.
What I've tried
- Naming symbols with
square,circle,diamondetc. This works but color is not supported for these basic objects apart from circle. - Maki symbols
Issues
-
The documentation refers to
makisymbols: https://plotly.com/python-api-reference/generated/plotly.graph_objects.Scattermap.html#plotly.graph_objects.scattermap.Marker.symbol
but the link is broken. I found a separate reference to maki icons here - https://iconduck.com/sets/mapbox-maki-icons but can't get any of them to plot (have tried settingmode="markers", prefixing the symbol name with"maki-"and so on). -
Plotly deprecated mapbox maps, which maki symbols depend on, and have moved to maplibre (https://plotly.com/python/mapbox-to-maplibre/). However there is no updated documentation on how to use marker symbols in plotly with a maplibre backdrop.
-
Other issues about this from 5-6 years ago are open referencing issues with symbol rendering on mapbox maps and suggesting fixes such as creating a mapbox account; generating public API keys; and only using supported themes. However these fixes do not apply to maplibre. (Some Scattermapbox Symbols Not Available #1804; add custom symbols for scattermapbox #2954)
Suggested Fix
Update the documentation to show:
- How to add symbols to a
graph_objects.Scattermapfigure using out-of-the-box symbols - How to add custom symbols to a
graph_objects.Scattermapfigure
Activity
gvwilson commentedon Apr 30, 2025
thanks for the report @ronand97 - @LiamConnors please have a look.
LiamConnors commentedon Apr 30, 2025
Thanks @ronand97 for the report.
Working on correcting the incorrect link now.
For the symbols not working, are there specific ones you tried that didn't work?
We have this example here https://plotly.com/python/tile-scatter-maps/#set-marker-symbols for setting marker symbols. Do those symbols render for you?
ronand97 commentedon Apr 30, 2025
Hey Liam thanks for taking a look. I can plot those three specific ones yeah. I just went back to test the maki icons. Initially I thought I couldn't get any of the maki icons working but trying again I got the very first one on this page (https://labs.mapbox.com/maki-icons/) working - the icon called
aerialway. However when I try to plotcharging-stationit doesn't work. So it seems like only some of the maki icons are supported, maybe this was clearer on the old link which now doesn't work.Separately a small note on the documentation you linked me (https://plotly.com/python/tile-scatter-maps/#set-marker-symbols) - it took me a second to realise that the bullet points were map styles and seemingly not related to symbols. I would expect that to be a list of supported symbols, whereas you can only see 3 supported symbols (bus, airport, harbor) by reading the code and it's not so clear what other icons are supported.
LiamConnors commentedon Apr 30, 2025
Thanks @ronand97. Good point about the bullet list. I'll rework this section. And will try out these other symbols to see what's working for me.
LiamConnors commentedon Jun 25, 2025
Hi @ronand97, sorry for the delay in getting you an answer on this.
The reason some markers don't work is the version of Maki icons we are using is v2.1 (https://app.unpkg.com/maki@2.1.0/files/icons) and https://labs.mapbox.com/maki-icons/ is referring to the latest version (v8).
We are going to update Plotly.js to use the latest: plotly/plotly.js#7447 describes the issue in more detail.
And I'll update the docs to ensure we outline which icons will work based on the version of Maki used.
Thanks for opening this issue.
ronand97 commentedon Jun 26, 2025
Thanks Liam, makes sense. Appreciate the update and coming back to this!
ronand97 commentedon Sep 5, 2025
Hey @LiamConnors, any update on this? I find myself needing some marker functionality again and I'd left a link to this issue as a comment in my codebase which reminded me about it 😄
LiamConnors commentedon Sep 5, 2025
Thanks for the reminder @ronand97. I'll take a look at this next week