qqman
The Manhattan-plot package for GWAS results, finished and dormant since 2017.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of ggcorrplot and ggmagnify — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
ggcorrplot came back after four years and found its significance markers had been lying
ggcorrplot draws correlation matrices in ggplot2 with optional significance marking and hierarchical reordering. It sat untouched from late 2022 until mid-2026, then shipped 0.2.0 and 0.3.0 sixteen days apart. Between them they added the display options users had been requesting since 2016 and repaired a set of bugs where hc.order = TRUE silently changed which cells were marked significant.
A single-purpose ggplot2 inset tool, refining the same three arguments.
ggmagnify draws magnified insets of a region of a ggplot, with projection lines connecting the inset to its source area. The visible releases are all small refinements to how that inset looks — corner radius, fill between projection lines — plus one fix for inset themes being overridden. There are only three entries, so the picture is necessarily partial.
ggcorrplot draws correlation matrices in ggplot2 with optional significance marking and hierarchical reordering. It sat untouched from late 2022 until mid-2026, then shipped 0.2.0 and 0.3.0 sixteen days apart. Between them they added the display options users had been requesting since 2016 and repaired a set of bugs where hc.order = TRUE silently changed which cells were marked significant.
Both releases chase the same target: parity with the older corrplot package inside a ggplot2 object. Significance stars appended to coefficient labels, circle scaling, decimal control, then boxed cells and glyphs sized by absolute correlation — these are corrplot's visual vocabulary reimplemented where they can be composed with other ggplot2 layers. The bug fixes point the other way, at foundations: p-values matched to cells by name rather than row position, clustering computed on the unrounded matrix, tl.col actually applied.
With the corrplot look largely reproduced and the correctness backlog cleared, the remaining gap is the mixed upper/lower display corrplot supports; that is the natural next argument if the current release pace holds.
ggmagnify draws magnified insets of a region of a ggplot, with projection lines connecting the inset to its source area. The visible releases are all small refinements to how that inset looks — corner radius, fill between projection lines — plus one fix for inset themes being overridden. There are only three entries, so the picture is necessarily partial.
Work concentrates on the visual finish of the inset rather than on new capability, which is what a package with one job should look like. Two feature releases a week apart in early 2024 suggest a short burst of attention rather than sustained development, and the feed goes quiet after mid-2024.
Too few entries to call a direction with confidence; continued small styling arguments would be consistent with what is visible.
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either ggcorrplot or ggmagnify.
The Manhattan-plot package for GWAS results, finished and dormant since 2017.
The R package for CODATA constants rebuilt its symbol table on NIST's naming so future updates stop being hand work.
The R client for AusTraits spends its releases chasing the dataset it reads.
A ggplot2 layer for seasonal adjustment output, filling in one plot type at a time.
A fossil-record simulator that quietly grew a trait-evolution engine.
Reference-based multiple imputation tables, shipping only what CRAN checks demand.
See all ggcorrplot alternatives → · See all ggmagnify alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
Both compete on the same themes — ggplot2 — within Analytics. ggcorrplot is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. ggcorrplot is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
Top ggcorrplot alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "ggcorrplot alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/ggcorrplot for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top ggmagnify alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "ggmagnify alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/ggmagnify for the full list with editorial commentary on each.