Pausing and Resuming an Animation

This example showcases:

• using the Animation.pause() method to pause an animation.

• using the Animation.resume() method to resume an animation.

Note

This example exercises the interactive capabilities of Matplotlib, and this will not appear in the static documentation. Please run this code on your machine to see the interactivity.

You can copy and paste individual parts, or download the entire example using the link at the bottom of the page.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.animation as animation
import numpy as np


class PauseAnimation:
    def __init__(self):
        fig, ax = plt.subplots()
        ax.set_title('Click to pause/resume the animation')
        x = np.linspace(-0.1, 0.1, 1000)

        # Start with a normal distribution
        self.n0 = (1.0 / ((4 * np.pi * 2e-4 * 0.1) ** 0.5)
                   * np.exp(-x ** 2 / (4 * 2e-4 * 0.1)))
        self.p, = ax.plot(x, self.n0)

        self.animation = animation.FuncAnimation(
            fig, self.update, frames=200, interval=50, blit=True)
        self.paused = False

        fig.canvas.mpl_connect('button_press_event', self.toggle_pause)

    def toggle_pause(self, *args, **kwargs):
        if self.paused:
            self.animation.resume()
        else:
            self.animation.pause()
        self.paused = not self.paused

    def update(self, i):
        self.n0 += i / 100 % 5
        self.p.set_ydata(self.n0 % 20)
        return (self.p,)


pa = PauseAnimation()
plt.show()