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Positron on desktop

Find out what you need to know to get started using Positron, then download the desktop installer for your platform.

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Please review Positron’s license agreement and privacy policy. Your acceptance of this license agreement and privacy policy is required as a condition to proceeding with your download or use of the software.

Platform Download Size SHA-256
Windows 10, 11 x64 (system level install) Positron-2025.07.0-204-Setup.exe 310M 7834f76
Windows 10, 11 x64 (user level install) Positron-2025.07.0-204-UserSetup.exe 310M 2ca1454
MacOS 10.15+ (universal) Positron-2025.07.0-204-universal.dmg 807M 7f5110c
MacOS 10.15+ (arm64/Apple Silicon) Positron-2025.07.0-204-arm64.dmg 728M 5604e8f
MacOS 10.15+ (x64/Intel) Positron-2025.07.0-204-x64.dmg 728M 52025a1
Debian-based Linux x64 (Ubuntu 20+) Positron-2025.07.0-204-x64.deb 308M 7f6ecb0
Debian-based Linux arm64 (Ubuntu 20+) Positron-2025.07.0-204-arm64.deb 303M 4b18d03
Red Hat-based Linux x64 (RHEL9) Positron-2025.07.0-204-x64.rpm 348M f951330
Red Hat-based Linux arm64 (RHEL9) Positron-2025.07.0-204-arm64.rpm 343M 209ca4d


Once you install Positron, it will automatically check for updates moving forward. Older releases are available on GitHub.

Positron Pro on Posit Workbench

Posit Workbench 2024.12.1 and later includes preview support for Positron Pro. To configure and use Positron Pro on Posit Workbench, please see the Posit Workbench Administration Guide and the Positron Pro user guide.

Release notes

Highlights

Positron is out of beta! ❤️

Stable releases of Positron are now available! Thank you to all our beta users who have been testing and giving feedback on our prereleases over the last year.

Daily builds 🪩

For users who are interested in trying out new features at a faster cadence, we now provide a channel of daily builds; you can opt in to these builds by changing the update.positron.channel setting to "dailies".

Migrating to Positron 💫

Our revamped Welcome page now includes two migration walkthroughs for users coming to Positron from other code editors and IDEs:

  • One walkthrough shows users coming from VS Code what is different about the Positron UI, how to manage Python interpreters and Python-specific settings, and what to know about extensions in Positron.
  • The other walkthrough shows users coming from RStudio how to navigate the UI, use familiar keyboard shortcuts, think about folders and workspaces, and configure formatting settings.

Bring up the Welcome page with the command Help: Welcome.

Positron Assistant 🤖

Positron Assistant, an AI client that provides LLM integration within Positron, is available in preview this release! Positron Assistant supports Chat via Anthropic as well as GitHub Copilot for inline completions. Use Positron Assistant to generate or refactor code, ask questions, get help with debugging, and get suggestions for the next steps in your data science projects. Compared to other IDE AI tooling, Positron Assistant offers novel data science and Positron-specific context. We have built out key integration points that allow the LLM to parse and interact with the current state of the Positron IDE, and will continue to expand these capabilities over time.

A few examples of these integration points include Positron’s:

  • Variables pane, providing names, dimensions, and column names of dataframes and Python/R based database connections, as well as metadata for arrays, lists, and other objects in memory
  • Plots pane for describing the current plot or suggesting variations and next steps for iterating on the current plot
  • Console, available to the model for viewing inputs and code outputs, as well as allowing the user or an AI agent to execute code in the console and view the output
  • Session state, providing what language is active in the console session (R or Python, including version), what packages are loaded, and what packages are installed

All of that Positron-specific context is in addition to the core capabilities of what traditional software-oriented GenAI clients have (active files, selected lines of code, files in project, training data in the model, etc).

For more information please see the Positron Assistant section of the user guide.

Changelog

New features

  • [#1744] R: A new Code Action is available for generating a roxygen documentation skeleton.
  • [#1728] By default, Positron no longer tries to save untitled editors when a debug session is started. This is to avoid disrupting the user workflow with a save dialog when a debug session starts.
  • Folding rules are now supported for R comment sections [#18] and R code cells [#2924]. Thanks to our contributor @kv9898!
  • [#7875] Custom environment variables for the Terminal and Consoles can now be configured in the Settings UI.
  • [#7550] The support for scaffolding a new folder based on templates has been revamped. Try out the improved Workspaces: New Folder from Template… command.
  • [#7838] The Assistant project tree tool now takes parameters to filter the tree output.
  • [#7404] Improved the Assistant Language Model Provider Configuration Modal close experience.
  • [#6158] Python Consoles now automatically reload imported files, so any changes made to a module are automatically picked up without needing to restart the Console session. You can opt out of this behavior with the python.enableAutoReload setting.
  • [#7202] The Positron version field can now be specified and validated in Positron extensions.
  • [#8018] Added a new Agent mode to Positron Assistant; note that you’ll now need to use this new mode if you want Assistant to run code on your behalf.
  • [#7902] New Python Projects can optionally now create a pyproject.toml file.
  • [#6167] We now link to our documentation from the Help menu.
  • [#6650] The up/down console input history navigation actions are now commands that you can bind custom keys to.
  • [#3312, #7706, #3657, #7933] Updated the Welcome Page with specific details for workspace and non-workspace contexts.
  • [#1785, #8260] Added a new homepage for Help.
  • [#7582] Moved the Editor Title Run button to the left of the Editor Action Bar.
  • [#4546] The Plots pane no longer attempts to autoresize plots that are slow to initially render.
  • [#7974] Section headers in .R files (from special comments like # A section ----) now act as end boundaries for code cells, thanks to @kylebutts!
  • [#8188] The Plots pane no longer applies a theme-based filter by default; re-enable the positron.plots.darkFilter setting if you prefer dark mode plots.
  • [#8166] R and Python are no longer run in a login shell by default; if you want to use shell startup scripts to customize R and Python session startup, update the kernelSupervisor.runInShell setting.
  • [#8178] Enabled streaming edits in Assistant inline editor chats by default.
  • [#7724] Added configuration to exclude files from AI inline completions.
  • [#5023] R: Pressing Cmd/Ctrl+Enter to run a statement of R code now falls back to running one line at a time when there are parse errors in the file.
  • Positron now supports R 4.6.0’s graphics engine (version 17).
  • [#8252] Python plots now use the intrinsic size by default, if available.
  • [#8240] Assistant’s Agent mode now includes a documentCreate tool.
  • [#2417, #2574, #4441] R completions are more responsive to text that has already been typed, i.e. text to the right of the cursor. It is easier to edit a function reference (call or value, with or without a namespace) without getting an extra set of parentheses or inserting the name of a second function.
  • [#2945] View() now supports function objects. It takes you directly to the original source, if the function has source references, or to a virtual document containing the deparsed function code otherwise. Functions are now also viewable from the Variables pane. Click on the View button on the right hand side of a variable entry to view its source definition in an editor.
  • [#8077] Assistant caches prompts for Anthropic models.
  • [#2689] R: When debugging functions that don’t have source references, the virtual source editors now behave like R files. They are highlighted as R code and features like evaluation commands now behave as expected
  • [#4359] Added plot zoom to the Editor Action Bar and move plot actions to the left side.
  • [#8174] Assistant can now directly install Python packages.

Bug fixes

  • [#3955] Notebook execution now respects the raises-exception cell tag and continues running subsequent cells after exceptions.
  • [#7884] Fixed how exited runtimes are shown in the dropdown of the console + button.
  • [#6987] Fixed console button and label behavior during interpreter restarts.
  • [#7406] Fixed failures loading local web server (e.g. Shiny) content in the Viewer pane in Remote SSH sessions.
  • [#7777] Fixed issue causing all JSON files to have the filetype “renv lockfile”.
  • [#5101] Positron’s version is now included in the built-in Issue Reporter and Diagnostics command output.
  • [#4843] R: Fixed issue opening localhost URLs from shiny::paneViewer() and related methods.
  • [#6915] Jupyter notebooks: Added support for update_display_data requests.
  • The RSTUDIO_PANDOC environment variable is now set correctly on Linux builds [#7929] and in terminals and tasks as well as R sessions [#7700].
  • [#7402] The QUARTO_R environment variable now points to your chosen R version in the Terminal.
  • [#7239] Fixed failure to set working directory from the Explorer when connecting via Remote SSH from Windows to Linux.
  • [#6701] Python: Updated search strategy to find uv interpreters more often.
  • [#7967] Fixed behavior on first boot of Positron to not show featured extension walkthroughs.
  • [#6422] We no longer incorrectly encode URLs to display in the Viewer pane.
  • [#7510] Fixed plot image encoding for Anthropic model provider.
  • [#7781] Fixed how the plot history can be scrolled using the mouse wheel.
  • [#7873, #7995] Fixed bug where specific Python console logs were printed to the user.
  • [#6660] Fixed R session management during sleep mode.
  • [#7850] Fixed duplicate preview buttons for .Rmd files.
  • [#7414] Folder templates for disabled languages no longer appear in New Folder from Template modal.
  • [#8052] Fixed Assistant sometimes failing to inspect variables.
  • [#7969] Fixed error using Github Copilot with Intel Mac computers.
  • [#7825] Fixed background for selected region in dark mode for Jupyter-like code cells.
  • [#6680] Added a new non-interactive RuntimeCodeExecutionMode to use as appropriate when executing code.
  • [#8096] Fixed a frozen console after an extension host restart.
  • [#7630] Fixed how folders can be attached in Assistant.
  • [#7750] Fixed spurious R diagnostics in Assistant code confirmation widgets.
  • [#4798] Clarified error message when Remote SSH can’t find a matching remote server to download.
  • [#8212] Fixed Assistant using invalid URIs for unsaved files.
  • [#6584] R: Requesting completions on non-parseable strings no longer crashes the language server.
  • [#8014] Assistant: removed duplicate provider config command.
  • [#7751] Assistant: removed the “Insert into Terminal” action in non-shell code blocks.
  • [#2013] Fixed how the Console execution history is populated.
  • [#7842] Assistant: removed empty text parts from messages containing other tool response types.
  • [#8230] Fixed issue connecting to the kernel supervisor on some Linux systems.

Dependencies

  • Updated bundled version of Air to 0.14.0.
  • Updated bundled Quarto to 1.7.32.