By default, RStudio will also automatically notify you of new versions every once in a while. If a new version is available follow the instruction on screen. To update RStudio to the latest version, open RStudio and click on Help > Check for Updates. For Windows, there is a package called installr that can help you with upgrading your R version and migrate your package library.

After installing a new version of R, you will have to reinstall all your packages with the new version.

However, if breaking changes happen, it is useful to know that you can have multiple versions of R installed in parallel and that you can switch between them in RStudio by going to Tools > Global Options > General > Basic. That is, your old code should still work after updating your R version.

Note: The changes introduced by new R versions are usually backwards-compatible.

It is not necessary to remove old versions of R from your system, but if you wish to do so you can check How do I uninstall R?.

If your version of R is older than that, download and install the latest version of R from the R project website for Windows, for MacOS, or for Linux If your R version is 4.0.0 or later, you don’t need to update R for this lesson. Alternatively, you can type sessionInfo() into the console.

When you open RStudio your R version will be printed in the console on the bottom left.

Simply run the following code in Rgui: install.packages('installr') install setInternet2(TRUE) only for R versions older than 3.3.0 installr::updateR() updating R. If you already have R and RStudio installed, first check if your R version is up to date: If you are using Windows you can easily upgrade to the latest version of R using the installr package.

Updating r packages