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 4.4.1. 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.
      • If your Mac is less than 5 years old, you want the arm64 version.
  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.

Installing RStudio

Windows

  1. Go to the Installers page.
    • Click Download RStudio for Windows or, under All Installers, the link next to Windows 10/11 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 cl948@cam.ac.uk

MacOS

  1. Go to the Installers page.
    • Click Download RStudio for MacOS or, under All Installers, the link next to macOS 12+ 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 cl948@cam.ac.uk

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.