Positron opening a Python interpreter in the console when using R

[Rolando]

I have just updated to Positron 2026.03 from 2026.02 and it appears its behaviour has changed.

At the moment I am only using R, and until now when I start up positron it would load an R Console. Now it is loading a Python console (I have Python installed, on my computer although I am not using it at the moment). I have to manually close the python console each time I start a session, and I can find nothing in the configuration which tells the system not to load the Python console.
I am running Ubuntu 24.04.4

Have I missed something?

[julia]

We have had a string of challenges in this area recently

• We addressed Python starting in a new workspace when it should not · Issue #11180 · posit-dev/positron · GitHub for the 2026.03 release but folks continued to see problems in certain situations.
• We are currently tracking further improvements in python starting sessions when it shouldn't · Issue #12116 · posit-dev/positron · GitHub, and we believe the situation is much better in our daily builds (although I'll admit not entirely solved yet).

We are continuing to work on it!

You may be interested in the interpreters.startupBehavior settings, for greater control:
https://positron.posit.co/interpreter-startup.html

If you are mainly an R user and you only want Python to start when you manually do so, you may want to add a setting like:

{
    "[python]": {
        "interpreters.startupBehavior": "manual"
    }
}

If you never want Python to start, you can change that to "disabled".

[Rolando]

Thanks very much for your reply @julia. I had actually found the python interpreter setting and put it on manual and it made no difference. When I put it on disable it does stop Python starting.

I also tried the trick of starting Rstudio, running a script and closing Rstudio to see if this would identify me as an "R User" as in the link that you shared for interpreter behavior, and that did not seem to make a difference either.

Now that I know that this is an ongoing problem, I am not so worried about it as I can just close the Python interpreter manually. I was just concerned that I was missing something in the set up. I really like Positron and think that it is a great piece of software!

The other thing that I should mention is that I did not have this problem in Positron 2026.02. It only appeared with the March upgrade. I will wait for the April upgrade to see it it is solved. Thanks for everything.

[julia]

Yes, you are absolutely correct that this problem started in the 2026.03 release. We have fixed the bulk of the aggressive starting up of Python sessions for the 2026.04 release, which should be out at the very beginning of April!

We think there may be a few rare situations where it may still occur but overall we have fixed a lot of this during our current milestone.