Legends

A legend is a visual element that displays a list with the name, stroke and fills of the series in a chart:

You can place a legend at Top, Bottom, Left, Right or Hidden positions, notice the Hidden position will disable legends in a chart, default value is Hidden.

cartesianChart1.LegendPosition = LiveChartsCore.Measure.LegendPosition.Bottom; // mark
// or use Top, Left, Right or Hidden

Customize default legends

You can quickly change the position, the font, the text size or the background color:

using System.Windows.Forms;
using LiveChartsCore.SkiaSharpView.WinForms;
using ViewModelsSamples.Axes.Multiple;

namespace WinFormsSample.Axes.Multiple;

public partial class View : UserControl
{
    private readonly CartesianChart cartesianChart;

    public View()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        Size = new System.Drawing.Size(50, 50);

        var viewModel = new ViewModel();

        cartesianChart = new CartesianChart
        {
            Series = viewModel.Series,
            YAxes = viewModel.YAxes,
            LegendPosition = LiveChartsCore.Measure.LegendPosition.Left,
            LegendTextPaint = viewModel.LegendTextPaint,
            LegendBackgroundPaint = viewModel.LedgendBackgroundPaint,
            LegendTextSize = 16,

            // out of livecharts properties...
            Location = new System.Drawing.Point(0, 0),
            Size = new System.Drawing.Size(50, 50),
            Anchor = AnchorStyles.Left | AnchorStyles.Right | AnchorStyles.Top | AnchorStyles.Bottom
        };

        Controls.Add(cartesianChart);
    }
}

View model

[ObservableObject]
public partial class ViewModel
{
    public ISeries[] Series { get; set; } = { ... };
    public Axis[] YAxes { get; set; } = { ... };

    public SolidColorPaint LegendTextPaint { get; set; } = // mark
        new SolidColorPaint // mark
        { // mark
            Color = new SKColor(50, 50, 50), // mark
            SKTypeface = SKTypeface.FromFamilyName("Courier New") // mark
        }; // mark

    public SolidColorPaint LedgendBackgroundPaint { get; set; } = // mark
        new SolidColorPaint(new SKColor(240, 240, 240)); // mark
}

Tooltip control from scratch

You can also create your own legend, the recommended way is to use the LiveCharts API (example bellow) but you can use anything as tooltip as soon as it implements the IChartLegend<T> interface. At the following example we build a custom control to render legends in our charts using the LiveCharts API.

CustomLegend.cs

using System.Linq;
using LiveChartsCore;
using LiveChartsCore.Drawing;
using LiveChartsCore.Drawing.Layouts;
using LiveChartsCore.SkiaSharpView.Drawing;
using LiveChartsCore.SkiaSharpView.Drawing.Layouts;
using LiveChartsCore.SkiaSharpView.SKCharts;

namespace ViewModelsSamples.General.TemplatedLegends;

public class CustomLegend : SKDefaultLegend
{
    protected override Layout<SkiaSharpDrawingContext> GetLayout(Chart chart)
    {
        var stackLayout = new StackLayout
        {
            Orientation = ContainerOrientation.Vertical,
            Padding = new Padding(15, 4),
            HorizontalAlignment = Align.Start,
            VerticalAlignment = Align.Middle,
        };

        foreach (var series in chart.Series.Where(x => x.IsVisibleAtLegend))
            stackLayout.Children.Add(new LegendItem(series));

        return stackLayout;
    }
}

View

using System.Windows.Forms;
using LiveChartsCore.SkiaSharpView.WinForms;
using ViewModelsSamples.General.TemplatedLegends;

namespace WinFormsSample.General.TemplatedLegends;

public partial class View : UserControl
{
    private readonly CartesianChart cartesianChart;

    public View()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        Size = new System.Drawing.Size(50, 50);

        var viewModel = new ViewModel();

        cartesianChart = new CartesianChart
        {
            Series = viewModel.Series,
            LegendPosition = LiveChartsCore.Measure.LegendPosition.Right,
            Legend = new CustomLegend(),

            // out of livecharts properties...
            Location = new System.Drawing.Point(0, 0),
            Size = new System.Drawing.Size(50, 50),
            Anchor = AnchorStyles.Left | AnchorStyles.Right | AnchorStyles.Top | AnchorStyles.Bottom
        };

        Controls.Add(cartesianChart);
    }
}