How to remove one row of column labels in a gt table?

Question

#Preparing the data and loading packages

library(modelsummary);library(tidyverse);library(gt)
as_tibble(mtcars)
df <- mtcars %>% mutate(cyl_ = factor(cyl)) %>% 
  dplyr::select(cyl_, mpg, vs, am, hp, wt)

#Gets table of descriptive statistics about different subsets of the data

print(t1 <- datasummary_balance(~cyl_, 
                          data = df,
                          output = "gt"))

#This hides the "Std. Dev." columns

t1 %>% cols_hide(c(3,5,7))

#Now I want to hide the "Mean" column labels, but I want to keep the "cyl_" value column labels. Any ideas how?
  

I want something like this:

Answer 1

Using the gt package, you can pipe your table to tab_options(column_labels.hidden = TRUE) to remove column labels. Unfortunately, this will remove both levels: the column headers, and the spanning labels that include the cyl info you want to keep.

Note that datasummary_balance() produces a highly customized table which is intended to be used as a ready-made output. In cases like these, it might be easier to just build the custom table you want using datasummary() instead of trying to customize datasummary_balance() (square peg, round hole, etc). For example:

library(modelsummary)
library(tidyverse)

df <- mtcars %>%
    select(cyl, mpg, vs, am, hp, wt) %>%
    mutate(cyl = factor(sprintf("%s (N = %s)", cyl, n()))) %>%
    as.data.frame() # The `All()` function does not accept tibbles

datasummary(
    All(df) ~ Mean * cyl,
    data = df,
    output = "gt")