RStudio on MacBook Air (M1)

Hi All,

I should buy a new PC for writing my final dissertation. It will be based on an R code that I'm writing and my current laptop is too old to afford (2013 MacBook Air).

I'm an Apple user, so I would immediately buy the new MacBook Air with processor M1, but on the net I'm finding several people complaining about using RStudio with the new apple processor, M1. By the way, many complaints were about some months ago.

Could you please advise me, if someone is using RStudio on the last mac, If those problems are now solved?

Many thanks

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Yes, RStudio is (as of the most recent version, 1.4.1717) compatible with the M1 processor. It isn't fully M1 optimized, but it is able to use R built for M1, so your R code will get the benefit of the M1's speed.

Most of the problems have come from people either (a) using a version of RStudio too old to support the M1, or (b) accidentally downloading the wrong version of R (there are different builds for Apple Silicon and the older Intel chips).

4 Likes

Unfortunately, RStudio 1.4.1717 has been unusable for me on my M1 iMac using the Apple silicon arm64 build of R 4.1 and 4.1.1. Code execution in RStudio often 'hangs' for tens of seconds. Resetting RStudio by deleting various config files typically fixes the issue, but only briefly. Since R runs blisteringly fast in the R.APP version of R, I'm pretty sure the problem is RStudio on an M1 Mac.

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I've been using R + RStudio for research and teaching since the M1 became available. I haven't seen any problems to date but it looks like I'm still on Version 1.4.1103.

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