I need help solving an issue with RStudio on my M1 Mac. I have RStudio version 2023.03.1+446 installed, but I do not have the option to select an R version in RStudio. RStudio seems to be using the system default R, and I am unable to install RStudio through Anaconda.
Specifically, in RStudio under "Tools -> Global Options -> General", there is no "Use R from" option available to select an R version. RStudio appears to be stuck using the Apple system R (currently R 4.2.0).
I would like to use R 4.1.2 from Anaconda, but when I try to install RStudio through Anaconda, I get errors. I have uninstalled all other versions of R and RStudio, but I still cannot get RStudio to recognize or use the Anaconda R.
My environment variables seem to be correctly set to point to the Anaconda R, but RStudio is still defaulting to the system R. I have tried manually selecting the Anaconda R executable path in the "R executable" option in RStudio, but that does not solve the issue.
I would greatly appreciate any help in getting RStudio to use the Anaconda R on my M1 Mac. Let me know if any additional information would help to diagnose and solve this issue.
Thank you in advance for your help!
The support article is for the server, not desktop, version of RStudio. If there is some under-the-hood setting (doubtful), it's not exposed in the desktop.
Anaconda is a terrific package manager for Python. I've never heard any accounts of it working as well as the native binaries for R.
Referring to the help page for the Desktop IDE, it seems the best option might be to set the RSTUDIO_WHICH_R environment variable.
While the article is indeed not for desktop, the option can exist in the IDE (at least for me on Windows with RStudio 2023.03.1):
That feels like it could work, where did you find that option? How did it it fail?
Agreed, my personal experience with conda has been... underwhelming. Or rather overwhelming, spending quite some hours in dependency hell. If you have to use it, sure; but it might end up creating more problems.
No idea, I just felt I should mention it for the sake of completeness, but to be honest I didn't even know it was available! Now that I'm re-reading the help page, it looks like indeed it was mentioned very fleetingly in the Windows section:
You can override which version of R is used via General panel of the RStudio Options dialog.
As there is no mention in the MacOS or Linux section, I guess this is normal. I should probably have read more attentively before posting.
If I did that I'd have few opportunities to learn from my own mistakes.