RStudio shows grey screen on macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 (Apple M1) — multiple versions affected

RStudio IDE
1

Hi all,

RStudio suddenly stopped working last week with no changes on my end. It opens but the entire screen stays grey and never loads.

Setup:

  • macOS Sonoma 14.4.1
  • Apple M1, built-in Retina display
  • Tried multiple RStudio versions including the latest — all show the same grey screen

Things I've already tried:

  • Deleting ~/.local/share/rstudio, ~/.config/rstudio, and ~/Library/Application Support/RStudio
  • Launching with --disable-gpu and --no-sandbox flags
  • Running: defaults write com.rstudio.desktop renderingEngine software
  • Running: sudo xattr -cr /Applications/RStudio.app
  • Full uninstall and reinstall of multiple RStudio versions
  • Checked Privacy & Security settings — no blocks
  • system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType shows normal GPU/display output

R itself runs fine in Terminal. No errors appear when launching RStudio via Terminal either — it just opens to a grey screen.

This was working fine last week. Any help appreciated!

2

Very strange. Could you try updating to the latest release of Sonoma (at this time I believe that is 14.8.5) and see if that makes any difference?

3

For what it's worth, we tried RStudio 2026.01.1 on macOS 14.6.1 today and it worked.

4

Thanks for your response! I updated to macOS Tahoe 26.4 before I saw this comment. I reinstalled the latest RStudio, and I'm having the same grey, frozen screen issue. I also took your suggestion and installed RStudio 2026.01.1 on macOS 26.4, and the issue remains.

5

Very likely some other problem (we are all using Tahoe internally when developing RStudio so we know it works, generally).

I recommend you open an issue in GitHub - rstudio/rstudio: RStudio is an integrated development environment (IDE) for R · GitHub with as much detail as possible and we can try to help you sort this out.