netbubbles

Directed bubble-graph visualisation with curved arrows

netbubbles is a Python library for creating publication-quality bubble-graph visualisations of directed weighted networks. It uses circular nodes with curved arrow edges, supports multiple layout algorithms, and comes with domain-specific presets for biology, bibliometrics, software engineering, and more.

Features

• Multiple layouts - circular, focus (hub-and-spoke), bilayer (concentric rings), grid, manual
• Curved arrow edges with automatic angle spreading and arrowheads
• Weighted edges with configurable colour/size tiers
• Self-loop support for recursive relationships
• Domain presets - LIANA cell-cell communication, citation networks, software dependencies, data pipelines, web graphs, social networks
• Fully customizable - colours, fonts, shadows, highlights, background, edge styles
• Multi-panel figures - compose multiple graphs in a single figure
• Legend support for node colour keys
• Graph operations - subgraph extraction, edge filtering, aggregation, node merging
• Built on matplotlib - integrates with any matplotlib workflow

Installation

pip install netbubbles

For preset modules that use pandas:

pip install netbubbles[presets]

Quick Start

import netbubbles as nb

g = nb.BubbleGraph.from_weighted_edges(
    {("A", "B"): 10, ("B", "C"): 7, ("C", "A"): 5, ("B", "A"): 3},
    colors={"A": "#E41A1C", "B": "#377EB8", "C": "#4DAF4A"},
)

ax = nb.draw(g, title="My Network")
ax.figure.savefig("network.png", dpi=150, bbox_inches="tight")

For layouts, presets, customization and graph operations see docs/usage.md.

Gallery

Circular Layout	Focus Layout	Bilayer Layout
Custom Style	Citation Network	Social Network

Examples

15 runnable scripts covering all layouts and presets - see docs/examples.md for the full list with previews.

cd examples && python generate_all.py

Citation

If you use netbubbles in a publication, please cite it:

APA:

dam2452. (2026). netbubbles: Directed bubble-graph visualisation with curved arrows (Version 0.2.0). https://github.com/dam2452/netbubbles

BibTeX:

@software{netbubbles2026,
  title   = {netbubbles: Directed bubble-graph visualisation with curved arrows},
  author  = {dam2452},
  year    = {2026},
  version = {0.2.0},
  url     = {https://github.com/dam2452/netbubbles}
}

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Here's how you can help:

1. Bug reports - Open an issue with a minimal reproducible example
2. Feature requests - Open an issue describing the use case
3. Code contributions - Fork, create a feature branch, and open a pull request
4. New presets - Add a new submodule under netbubbles/presets/ with a to_graph() function and an example

Development setup

git clone https://github.com/dam2452/netbubbles.git
cd netbubbles
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest tests/

License

This project is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

• Use it freely - for research, education, personal projects
• Cite the author - attribution required in publications and derivative works
• No commercial use - you may not sell or monetize this software
• Share changes back - modifications must be distributed under the same license (pull requests welcome!)

See LICENSE for full details.