Get Started

Note

Positron is currently in Public Beta but we are nearing our initial Release Candidate. This means that while it is usable and stable, it may still have some rough edges. We welcome your feedback and contributions as we continue to improve Positron.

Positron might be a good fit for you if…

  • you use VS Code for data science (Python or R) but wish it included more interactive affordances for data-specific tasks like running exploratory code, examining your variables and datasets, interacting with your plots, and developing data apps such as Shiny, Streamlit, or FastAPI.
  • you use JupyterLab or hosted notebook tools for data science (Python or R) and are ready for a more powerful, fully-featured IDE that still supports notebooks.
  • you use RStudio and want more ability to customize or extend your IDE.
  • you use additional languages beyond only Python or R in your day-to-day data science or package development work, like Rust, C++, JavaScript, or Lua.
  • you want access to powerful, data-science specific AI integrations in a modern, extensible IDE.

Machine prerequisites

Before installing Positron, ensure your Python and/or R environments are ready to work with Positron. You don’t need to install both, but Positron doesn’t bundle either Python or R.

Windows prerequisites

If you’re using Windows, make sure you have the latest Visual C++ Redistributable installed.

If you’re an R user, note that Positron doesn’t currently bundle Rtools. If you need Rtools for your package development or other work, you can either use the official guidance from CRAN on installing Rtools and putting it on the PATH, or alternatively, use rig to install and set up Rtools:

rig system rtools add

Python prerequisites

Positron works with actively supported versions of Python, from 3.9 to 3.13. We recommend pyenv and pyenv for Windows for managing Python versions. On Linux, you’ll want to be aware of the build requirements; for example, you’ll need the system library for SQLite (sqlite-devel or libsqlite3-dev) installed ahead of time so pyenv can properly build your chosen Python version for use with Positron.

Positron requires the IPython kernel (version 6.19.1 or higher) to communicate with Python. By default, the IPython kernel is bundled with Positron for the CPython implementation (the standard Python implementation) and added to the Python search path.

If you are using an implementation other than CPython, you’ll need to install the IPython kernel manually.

If you prefer finer control over your Python environment, set the python.useBundledIpykernel setting to false and install the IPython kernel manually.

Manually installing the IPython kernel

Positron prompts you to install the IPython kernel if it isn’t found when you initially try to use a Python environment. Alternatively, you can add ipykernel to your package’s existing requirements file, or install it manually as follows:

python3 -m pip install ipykernel

R prerequisites

Positron requires R 4.2 or higher. To install R, follow the instructions for your operating system at https://cloud.r-project.org/.

Alternatively, if you’d like to have multiple R installations, rig is a great tool to manage this which works well with Positron.

If you’re an R package developer, you will also want to make sure that you have the current versions of certain R packages, all of which had recent updates to make them work more smoothly in Positron. Run one of the code snippets below to ensure that you are up-to-date:

# if you're a pak person (we are!)
pak::pak(c("usethis", "cli", "crayon", "rlang", "roxygen2", "pkgload"))

# or using base R
install.packages(c("usethis", "cli", "crayon", "rlang", "roxygen2", "pkgload"))