Plot not saving with `{ggplot2 4.0.0}`

[vidonne]

While running {gg_record()} with the new updated {ggplot2 4.0.0} the plot isn't saved and the doesn't appear in the viewer panel. Running the code below will generate the directory but not save the plot. The plot is generated though and will appear in the normal Plot panel instead.

# load packages
library(ggplot2)
library(camcorder)

# record plot
gg_record(
  dir = "temp",
  device = "png",
  width = 7,
  height = 5,
  units = "in"
)

# plot
ggplot(
  mtcars,
  aes(x = hp, y = mpg)
) +
  geom_point() +
  labs(
    title = "Simple scatterplot with ggplot",
    x = "Horsepower (hp)",
    y = "Fuel efficiency (mpg)",
    caption = "Source: mtcars"
  )

Your package is so useful in the plot creation workflow. I hope there is an easy fix to make it compatible with the new {ggplot2} version.
Thanks for all you work on this package!!!
Cedric

R version 4.5.1 (2025-06-13)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Running under: Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/blas/libblas.so.3.12.0 
LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.12.0  LAPACK version 3.12.0

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C           LC_TIME=C.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=C.UTF-8    
 [5] LC_MONETARY=C.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=C.UTF-8    LC_PAPER=C.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C             
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=C           LC_TELEPHONE=C         LC_MEASUREMENT=C.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C   

time zone: Europe/Berlin
tzcode source: system (glibc)

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] camcorder_0.1.0 ggplot2_4.0.0  

[gkaramanis]

I've noticed the same. It somehow seems to have worked a couple times but it might be because I was using {patchwork}, haven't tested it though.

As a workaround for now, I add record_polaroid() after the ggplot code to manually save the plot in the defined directory.

[thebioengineer]

Hi @vidonne - thanks for raising this. Life has been in the way and I will be aiming to fix this ASAP. I'll need to look into this more though.

[thebioengineer]

As an update, ggplot 4.0.0 changed from s3 objects to s7, which has a totally different way of handling print methods, etc. Been learning about s7 and how we can support this, but in the mean time, the record_polaroid functions should still work.