Installing R and RStudio

This document walks you through installing R and RStudio on your personal computer.

In the instructions below, anywhere it says (version), there will be a series of numbers such as 4.0.4. The specific version does not matter, but we want to always use the most recent one.

Installing R

Windows

1. Go to the Windows Installers page.
   • Click Download R (version) to download: Whatever version is listed will be the most current.
2. Run the installer.
   • If the installer asks, grant it administrative privileges to install.
   • Follow the on-screen instructions.
   • You do not need to change any default values unless you have a good reason.
3. Once it completes, R is installed!
   • There may now be R icons on your desktop or start menu, but we typically do not use R directly.

MacOS

1. Go to the MacOS Installers page.
   • Scroll to “Latest release”
   • Click R-(version).pkg to download: Whatever version is listed will be the most current.
2. Run the installer.
   • Follow the on-screen instructions.
   • You do not need to change any default values unless you have a good reason.
3. Once it completes, R is installed!
   • There may now be R icons on your desktop or start menu, but we typically do not use R directly.
4. Browse to the XQuartz download page
   • Click XQuartz-(version).dmg to download.
5. Run XQuartz installer.
   • XQuartz is needed to create windows to display many types of R graphics: this used to be included in MacOS until version 10.8 but now must be downloaded separately.

Installing RStudio

Windows

1. Go to the Installers page.
   • Click Download RStudio for Windows or, under All Installers, the link next to Windows 10/8 to download: Whatever version is listed will be the most current.
2. Run the installer.
   • If the installer asks, grant it administrative privileges to install.
   • Follow the on-screen instructions.
   • You do not need to change any default values unless you have a good reason.
3. Once it completes, RStudio is installed!
   • We will use the RStudio icon to load RStudio and use R.
4. Open RStudio and verify it loads.
   • In the bottom-left panel of RStudio, you should see something vaguely like the image at the end of this document.
   • If there are any problems, email me at clanfear@uw.edu

MacOS

1. Go to the Installers page.
   • Click Download RStudio for MacOS or, under All Installers, the link next to macOS 10.13+ to download: Whatever version is listed will be the most current.
2. Run the installer.
   • Follow the on-screen instructions.
   • You do not need to change any default values unless you have a good reason.
3. Once it completes, RStudio is installed!
   • We will use the RStudio icon to load RStudio and use R.
4. Open RStudio and verify it loads.
   • In the bottom-left panel of RStudio, you should see something vaguely like the image below.
   • If there are any problems, email me at clanfear@uw.edu

When you open RStudio, you should see something similar to this in the bottom-left:

If so, your installation was successful! If not, post on Slack or the mailing list.