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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-29T17:16:25+00:00

It seems that the root object, a.k.a 0 has hidden properties in Matlab. For

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It seems that the root object, a.k.a 0 has hidden properties in Matlab. For example, DefaultTextInterpreter is one of them:

 x = get(0,'DefaultTextInterpreter');

When I use

 get(0)

I get a long list, which does not include DefaultTextInterpreter.

Even setting undocumented properties to be visible by 

 set(0,'HideUndocumented','off');

does not seem to help.

How can I find all of the properties of the root object, including DefaultTextInterpreter?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Default properties are not hidden nor undocumented – they are available for all standard Handle Graphics properties by simply prefixing ‘Default’ to the property name, together with the object type (‘Line’, ‘Axes’ etc.). This is explained in the official documentation.

    In fact, this mechanism also works for hidden/undocumented properties, as shown for the LineSmoothing property.

    To see all the supported default properties, do as follows:

    >> get(0,'Default')
ans = 
          defaultFigurePosition: [440 378 560 420]
               defaultTextColor: [0 0 0]
              defaultAxesXColor: [0 0 0]
              defaultAxesYColor: [0 0 0]
              defaultAxesZColor: [0 0 0]
          defaultPatchFaceColor: [0 0 0]
          defaultPatchEdgeColor: [0 0 0]
               defaultLineColor: [0 0 0]
    defaultFigureInvertHardcopy: 'on'
             defaultFigureColor: [0.8 0.8 0.8]
               defaultAxesColor: [1 1 1]
          defaultAxesColorOrder: [7x3 double]
          defaultFigureColormap: [64x3 double]
        defaultSurfaceEdgeColor: [0 0 0]
         defaultFigurePaperType: 'A4'
        defaultFigurePaperUnits: 'centimeters'
         defaultFigurePaperSize: [20.98404194812 29.67743169791]

    Note that this does not return the undocumented defaults. You can always get the undocumented defaults directly:

    >> get(0,'DefaultLineLineSmoothing')
ans =
off

    Since I can’t help myself :-), here’s a bit of now-really-undocumented knowledge, which does not answer the OP question but it somehow related. Readers who are only interested in the original question or in purely-documented/supported stuff can safely skip this part:

    >> p = findprop(handle(gcf),'pos')
p =
    schema.prop

>> p.get
            Name: 'Position'
     Description: ''
        DataType: 'figurePositionType'
    FactoryValue: [100 100 660 520]
     AccessFlags: [1x1 struct]
         Visible: 'on'
     GetFunction: []
     SetFunction: []

    In this simple snippet, note that the default (FactoryValue) for the position property of the UDD hg.Figure class is different than the HG default that is returned by the root’s DefaultFigurePosition property. More information on UDD properties can be found here.

    Addendum 2013-02-13: I’ve just posted a detailed article explaining how Matlab’s Default and Factory property values work, how they relate to each other, and how they can be accessed.

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