Hi, I have a couple of RStudio installation queries around Posit Assistant. I deploy RStudio 2026.04.0 via RStudio-2026.04.0-526.exe /S. Once the software has been installed, I can go to Tools Global Options and Assistant and untick Show Posit Assistant on Toolbar.
I would like to know if there is someway of disabling Post Assistant by default during the installation as this feature is likely to generate a few queries on users having to subscribe to continue using this feature so I would prefer to have it not appear by default and if someone wants to use it, they can enable it via ticking Show Posit Assistant. Also, when the software is installed initially, you also get prompted with What's New which shows information on Posit Assistant, I would like to not have that appear on first launch of RStudio 2026.04.0
Thanks,
Paul
For RStudio Desktop you can disable and hide the Posit Assistant features entirely by setting the environment variable RSTUDIO_DISABLE_POSIT_ASSISTANT to any value, e.g. RSTUDIO_DISABLE_POSIT_ASSISTANT=1.
Note, RStudio Server (not relevant to your situation, but for completeness) lets you do the same via adding posit-assistant-enabled=0 to /etc/rstudio/rsession.conf. Server also supports the environment-variable approach.
The "What's New" dialog (only in Desktop) can be suppressed via setting RSTUDIO_DISABLE_WHATS_NEW=1 in the environment.
I've opened an issue to add these to the User Guide: Document how to disable/hide Posit Assistant and the What's New dialog · Issue #17518 · rstudio/rstudio · GitHub
Thanks for the reply, this does seem to work and I can disable Posit Assistant for all users on a machine via adding this in C:\R\R-4.6.0\etc (R-4.6.0 is installed here) in the file Renviron.site
However, should an individual user then want to use this feature, I create a file .Renviron in the user's default documents folder with the setting RSTUDIO_DISABLE_POSIT_ASSISTANT=
and Renviron.site setting still seems to take precedence over .Renviron setting (resulting in Posit assistant being disabled still for that user). From what I have read, .Renviron should normally take precendence over Renviron.site
Figured out where I was going wrong for RStudio Desktop, putting RSTUDIO_DISABLE_POSIT_ASSISTANT="" in .Renviron works and then enables it for the individual user