Reset original defaults with `update_geom_defaults()`

[bwiernik]

Sometimes, as I'm interactively building a plot, I change geom default aesthetics with update_geom_defaults(), then change my mind and want to put them back. Currently, I don't see a way to do that other than by knowing what the original defaults were or restarting my R session.

It would be really helpful to be able to do something like this to reset the size default to 1.5:

update_geom_defaults("geom", list(size = NULL))

And/or like this to reset all aesthetics to their original defaults:

update_geom_defaults("geom", NULL)

[clauswilke]

As far as I can tell, we just overwrite the settings for the geom, so afterwards we don't have them anymore either.

ggplot2/R/geom-defaults.r

Lines 14 to 19 in 759c63c

	update_geom_defaults <- function(geom, new) {
	g <- check_subclass(geom, "Geom", env = parent.frame())
	old <- g$default_aes
	g$default_aes <- defaults(rename_aes(new), old)
	invisible()
	}

At some point there was talk about saving the geom defaults in the theme, and that would be a great solution for this problem, but I think there hasn't been much development on the PR for a long time now.

[hadley]

One small improvement here would be for update_geom_defaults() to invisibly return the previous values. That's our standard convention for functions that modify global state.

[davidhodge931]

Related to this, could there be a way to easily reset all geom defaults back to originals?

Maybe when the geom argument is NULL?
update_geom_updates(geom = NULL, update = NULL)

Or maybe a new function like reset_geom_updates()?

[teunbrand]

Reviving this issue for after 3.5.1

[teunbrand]

Considering this closed (again) after #5846.