Positron tour

Slides (PDF)

Hands-on activities

Take about 10 minutes to try one or more of the following activities in Positron

Positron bingo

Pick a bingo card, any card!

For the Data Explorer cells: first run View(mtcars) in the Console.

Customize your Positron settings

If you’re new-ish to Positron, there’s a good chance you haven’t tuned it to your taste yet. Pick a few of the following to try:

  • If you’re coming from RStudio, turn on RStudio keybindings: open Settings and search for “RStudio keybindings”
  • Experiment with layouts: try the layout picker in the top right, or move panes around and see what sticks
  • Search settings for “quiet mode” and consider turning it on to skip R’s startup banner
  • Subscribe to the “dailies” release channel if you want to try new features early, and don’t mind occasional instability
  • Open the Data Explorer on a data frame (e.g. View(mtcars) or click one in the Variables pane) and try sorting, filtering, or summarizing a column
  • Open the Packages pane and check whether any of your packages have updates available
  • If you like inline Quarto output, turn that setting on and test drive one of your Quarto documents
  • If you’re on macOS, experiment with Positron native tabs support as a way of managing multiple windows
  • Poke around other settings you care about, such as those for the R, Quarto, or Shiny extensions
  • Layout picker: top-right corner of the window
  • How to get to your Settings:
    • Cmd/Ctrl + ,
    • the gear icon in the lower left
    • via the command palette: Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + P, then “Preferences: Open Settings”
  • RStudio keybindings: workbench.keybindings.rstudioKeybindings
  • Quiet mode: positron.r.quietMode (suppresses R’s startup banner)
  • Dailies release channel: update.positron.channel, set to "dailies"
  • Inline Quarto output: quarto.inlineOutput.enabled
  • Native tabs (macOS only): window.nativeTabs (you’ll have to restart Positron to apply a change)

Multiple R sessions (option 1 of 2)

  • Create 2 (or more!) concurrent R sessions of the same or different versions
  • Create different objects in each session and explore how that plays out in the Variables pane
  • Restart 1 session (but not the other(s)). What do you see in the Variables pane now?
  • Click the ⓘ in the Console action bar to see session metadata. Can you find the R executable path?
  • Can you figure out how to rename an R session?

Multiple R versions (option 2 of 2)

  • Install rig: https://github.com/r-lib/rig. Note the docs in repo’s README
  • Use rig to list your existing R versions. Which one is the system default?
  • Ask rig to list all available R versions
  • Install another R version. Make it the new default (or not)
  • Launch Positron and see that the new R version is now also available
  • Consider going back to your previous default R version

Format some ugly R code

  • Download air-practice.R (poorly formatted R code, on purpose). Alternatively, open a personal R file with questionable formatting
  • Open it in Positron
  • Remove the # fmt: skip file line, so that Air will format the file
  • Experiment with the Format Selection and/or Format Document commands to see how Air would reformat it
  • Inspect the Git diff to see what’s changed