Check if R is running in RStudio

Question

I am looking for a way to test if R is being run from RStudio. For some reason I could find the answer on google yesterday but not today, but I think it had to do with testi

Answer 1

When I start RStudio it seems to have tools:rstudio in position 2 on the search path. This has a function "RStudio.version" which is undocumented but seems to return the RStudio version string:

> RStudio.version()
[1] "0.96.316"

So you can define:

is.RStudio <- function(){
  if(!exists("RStudio.version"))return(FALSE)
  if(!is.function(RStudio.version))return(FALSE)
  return(TRUE)
}

and maybe use that.

Answer 2

There is no "running inside RStudio". RStudio is merely an IDE layer that wraps around R; at the end of the day it just launches the normal R executable you need to have on your $PATH anyway to operate RStudio.

As a proxy, and as R Studio You could test available.packages() for the 'manipulate' package though, or as a shorter version see if RStudio added itself to the .libPath() content:

R> any(grepl("RStudio", .libPaths()))
[1] TRUE
R> 
R> 

Edit in May 2020 or eight years later The question does come up, and one can query a variety of things from within. Here is an example from the terminal of RStudio:

$ env | grep -i rstudio | sort
GIO_LAUNCHED_DESKTOP_FILE=/usr/share/applications/rstudio.desktop
PATH=[...redacted...]
RMARKDOWN_MATHJAX_PATH=/usr/lib/rstudio/resources/mathjax-27
RS_RPOSTBACK_PATH=/usr/lib/rstudio/bin/rpostback
RSTUDIO=1
RSTUDIO_CONSOLE_COLOR=256
RSTUDIO_CONSOLE_WIDTH=111
RSTUDIO_PANDOC=/usr/lib/rstudio/bin/pandoc
RSTUDIO_PROGRAM_MODE=desktop
RSTUDIO_PROJ_NAME=chshli
RSTUDIO_SESSION_ID=9C62D3D4
RSTUDIO_SESSION_PORT=13494
RSTUDIO_TERM=2BD6BB88
RSTUDIO_USER_IDENTITY=edd
RSTUDIO_WINUTILS=bin/winutils
$ 

Similarly, from within the R session:

R> se <- Sys.getenv()
R> se[grepl("rstudio",se,ignore.case=TRUE)]
GIO_LAUNCHED_DESKTOP_FILE        /usr/share/applications/rstudio.desktop
PATH                             [...also redacted...]
RMARKDOWN_MATHJAX_PATH           /usr/lib/rstudio/resources/mathjax-27
RS_RPOSTBACK_PATH                /usr/lib/rstudio/bin/rpostback
RSTUDIO_PANDOC                   /usr/lib/rstudio/bin/pandoc
R> 

Answer 3

Check the .Platform$GUI option for "RStudio"

is.rstudio = function(){
  .Platform$GUI == "RStudio"
}

See:

http://thecoatlessprofessor.com/programming/detecting-if-r-is-in-rstudio-and-changing-rstudios-default-graphing-device/

Answer 4

On a Mac only the Sys.getenv answer works

platform x86_64-apple-darwin10.8.0
version.string R version 3.1.0 (2014-04-10)

Sys.getenv("RSTUDIO")=="1" [1] TRUE

RStudio.version() Error: could not find function "RStudio.version"

any(grepl("RStudio", .libPaths())) [1] FALSE

.libPaths() [1] "/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.1/Resources/library"

Answer 5

As of today, there are a few packages which include functions to check whether RStudio is running:

rstudioapi::isAvailable()
assertive::is_rstudio()

(list is non-exhaustive)

The assertive and assertive.reflections packages, resp., do include additional functions to check for other IDEs, desktop/server versions of RStudio, and various R releases (e.g., alpha, beta, devel, release, patched, etc.)

Answer 6

I find the following works for me

checkRstudio <- function () {
  return ("tools:rstudio" %in% search())
}

I am sort of new to R myself, but I believe Rstudio necessarily loads the package "tools:rstudio" in order to run.