rig Posit Software, PBC

• On macOS, R.app often does not work if you install multiple R versions.

You can one of our installers or our Homebrew tap.

Download the latest release from and install it the usual way.

If you use Homebrew (Intel or Arm version), you can install rig from our tap:

brew tap r-lib/rig
brew install --cask rig

You can use x86_64 rig on Arm macs, and it will be able to install Arm builds of R. But you cannot use Arm rig on Intel macs. If you use both brew versions, only install rig with one of them.

To update rig you can run

brew upgrade --cask rig

There are several possible ways to install rig on Windows: with our installer, scoop, choco or winget.

Download the latest release from and install it the usual way.

rig adds itself to the user’s path, but you might need to restart your terminal after the installation on Windows.

An easy way to install rig on Windows 10 and above is to use the built-in WinGet package manager. The name of the package is posit.rig.

winget install posit.rig

Note that updating a WinGet package typically takes some time, so WinGet might not have the latest version of rig.

On Linux you can install rig from a DEB or RPM package, or from a tarball.

• Debian 11, 12,
• Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04, 24.04
• Fedora Linux 40, 41
• OpenSUSE 15.6
• SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP6
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, 8, 9,
• AlmaLinux 8, 9,
• Rocky Linux 8, 9.

On any Ubuntu or Debian distro, you can use our package repository to install rig. First you add our key to your config:

`which sudo` curl -L https://rig.r-pkg.org/deb/rig.gpg -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/rig.gpg

Then add the rig repository:

`which sudo` sh -c 'echo "deb http://rig.r-pkg.org/deb rig main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rig.list'

If you already added both the key and the repository, then install the r-rig package (rig is a different package in Debian and Ubuntu):

`which sudo` apt update
`which sudo` apt install r-rig

On most RPM based distros (except for OpenSUSE and SLES) you can install our RPM package directly:

`which sudo` yum install -y https://github.com/r-lib/rig/releases/download/latest/r-rig-latest-1.$(arch).rpm

On OpenSUSE and SLES use zypper instead of yum:

`which sudo` zypper install -y --allow-unsigned-rpm https://github.com/r-lib/rig/releases/download/latest/r-rig-latest-1.$(arch).rpm

Download the latest releast from and uncompress it to /usr/local

curl -Ls https://github.com/r-lib/rig/releases/download/latest/rig-linux-$(arch)-latest.tar.gz |
  `which sudo` tar xz -C /usr/local

The macOS and Linux installers also install completion files for zsh and bash.

zsh completions work out of the box.

For bash completions install the bash-completion package from Homebrew or your Linux distribution and make sure it is loaded from your .bashrc. (You don’t need to install bash from Homebrew, but you can if you like.)

Use rig add to add a new R installation:

rig add release

Use rig list to list the currently installed R versions, and rig default to set the default one.

Run rig to see all commands and examples.

Run rig --help and rig --help to see the documentation.

Command list:

rig add        -- install a new R version [alias: install]
rig available  -- List R versions available to install.
rig default    -- print or set default R version [alias: switch]
rig library    -- manage package libraries [alias: lib] (experimental)
rig list       -- list installed R versions [alias: ls]
rig resolve    -- resolve a symbolic R version
rig rm         -- remove R versions [aliases: del, delete, remove]
rig rstudio    -- start RStudio with the specified R version
rig run        -- Run R, an R script or an R project
rig sysreqs    -- manage R-related system libraries and tools (experimental) (macOS)
rig system     -- manage current installations

Run rig --help for information about a subcommand.

macOS rig system subcommands

rig system add-pak                 -- install or update pak for an R version
rig system allow-debugger          -- allow debugging R with lldb and gdb
rig system allow-debugger-rstudio  -- allow debugging RStudio with lldb and gdb
rig system allow-core-dumps        -- allow creating core dumps when R crashes
rig system fix-permissions         -- restrict system library permissions to admin
rig system forget                  -- make system forget about R installations
rig system make-links              -- create R-* quick links
rig system make-orthogonal         -- make installed versions orthogonal
rig system no-openmp               -- remove OpenMP (-fopenmp) option for Apple compilers
rig system setup-user-lib          -- set up automatic user package libraries [alias: create-lib]

Windows rig system subcommands

rig system add-pak                 -- install or update pak for an R version
rig system clean-registry          -- clean stale R related entries in the registry
rig system make-links              -- create R-* quick links
rig system rtools                  -- manage Rtools installations
rig system setup-user-lib          -- set up automatic user package libraries [alias: create-lib]
rig system update-rtools40         -- update Rtools40 MSYS2 packages

Linux rig system subcommands

rig system detect-platform         -- detect operating system version and distribution
rig system add-pak                 -- install or update pak for an R version
rig system make-links              -- create R-* quick links
rig system setup-user-lib          -- set up automatic user package libraries [alias: create-lib]

View and select the default R version in the macOS menu bar. Start RStudio or a recent RStudio project with the selected R version. Select between your package libraries.

To start the menu bar app the first time, run the Rig app in “Applications” from Finder or Spotlight, or run

open -a Rig

from a Terminal. Then you can check the “Launch at login” box in “Preferences” to start it automatically in the future.

Note: if you have a lot of menu bar apps running on an M1/M2 mac, then the some of them might be under the camera area. There is no good solution for this currently, other than running less menu bar apps.

Use the ghcr.io/r-lib/rig/r Docker container to easily run multiple R versions. It is currently based on Ubuntu 22.04 and contains rig and the six latest R versions, including R-next and R-devel. It is available for x86_64 and arm64 systems:

> docker run ghcr.io/r-lib/rig/r rig ls
* name   version    aliases
------------------------------------------
  3.6.3
  4.0.5
  4.1.3
  4.2.3             oldrel
* 4.3.1             release
  devel  (R 4.4.0)
  next   (R 4.3.1)

Please open an issue in our issue tracker at

Why does rig create a user package library?

> Installing non-base packages into a user package library has several > benefits: > > - The system library is not writeable for regular users on some > systems (Windows and Linux, typically), so we might as well create a > properly versioned user library at the default place. > - Some tools need a clean R environment, with base packages only, and > do not work well if user packages are installed into the system > library. E.g. R CMD check is such a tool, and > is another. > - You can delete an R installation (e.g. with rig rm) and then and > then install it again, without losing your R packages.

Why does rig install pak?

> To be able to install R packages efficiently, from CRAN, Bioconductor > or GitHub, right from the start. pak also supports installing system > libraries automatically on some Linux systems. > > If you don’t want rig add to install pak, use the --without-pak > option.

Why does rig change the permissions of the system library (on macOS)?

> To make sure that you don’t install packages accidentally into the > system library. See “Why does rig create a user package library?” > above.

Why does rig set the default CRAN mirror?

> To avoid the extra work the users need to spend on this. > > The mirror is usually better than the > other, in that it is a CDN that is close to most users, and that it is > updated more often. > > If you want to use a different mirror, you can set the repos option > in your .Rprofile, so the rig repo settings will be ignored. > > You can also use the --without-cran-mirror option of rig add.

Why does rig set up P3M?