What’s New with Posit Cloud

2024

May 2024

Posit Cloud Documentation Has Moved

The Posit Cloud Guide, Get Started and What’s New documentation are all now in their new home here at https://docs.posit.co/cloud.

Removed Support of R Versions Older Than 4.0.5

Based on our policy of supporting the latest 5 minor versions of R, and in light of the recent related CVE, we have removed support for R versions older than 4.0.5.

If your project is using an older version of R, a newer version will automatically be selected for you the next time your project starts. You will need to reinstall any R packages that were installed in your project.

Updated Posit Pro Drivers

The Posit Pro Drivers have been updated to 2024.03.0 for Cloud projects. Please consult the release notes for more information.

2023

December 2023

GitHub Copilot in RStudio Projects

If you have access to GitHub Copilot, you can enable GitHub Copilot in your RStudio projects.

How To

1. Open your RStudio project, then click on “Project Options” in the Tools menu.
2. In the dialog that opens, click on “Copilot”, then select “Yes” for both “Enable GitHub Copilot” and “Index project files with GitHub Copilot”.
3. Click “Sign In” to authenticate, and follow the prompts.

GitHub Copilot must be enabled for projects individually. You must have access to GitHub Copilot via your GitHub account, and you must authenticate with that account before you can use GitHub Copilot in your projects. GitHub Copilot is free for verified students and teachers.

Please note that this feature is in preview. If you’d like to provide feedback or report an issue, please file an issue on the RStudio GitHub repository.

Happy coding!

November 2023

Learn R with Posit Recipes

Looking for ways to get started with R quickly? Posit Recipes can help!

Posit Recipes are a collection of nearly 100 instructional guides with code snippets that cover everything from coding basics to data modeling. You can apply the concepts and techniques to your own RStudio projects on Posit Cloud.

Posit Recipes feature up-to-date best practices for coding in R, and replace Posit Primers. Primers will no longer be available after mid-December 2023.

August 2023

New Python Versions

Do you need to use a different version of python? We now provide recent patch releases for python 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10 and 3.11.

How To

In an RStudio project, click on Global Options in the Tools menu, then click Python. Selecting a Python interpreter in the dialog will bring up a list of available versions.

Project Templates

Simplify, speed up and share common workflows using Project Templates.

Use a Project Template to define a set of files and packages as a starting point for future projects. If you often start a project by importing the same set of packages, you can define a template with those packages included, and then use it next time you begin a project. The packages will be pre-installed, saving you time and ensuring a common coding environment. See the Project Templates section of the Guide for more details on how to create templates.

We have also included some sample templates for common workflows, and will continue to add more. Try them out via the New Project from Template action in the New Project menu.

Note

The existing Base Project feature has been superceded by the Default Template feature. Any template can be designated as a default template, and will be used whenever a project is created directly from the New Project menu. Additionally, a default template can now be defined for Jupyter projects - previously, only an RStudio project could be defined as a base project. All base projects have been automatically converted to default project templates and will function as they did before. See the Default Template section of the Guide for more information.

July 2023

Publishing 2.0

We have made significant improvements to publishing applications and documents.

• More content types are supported for both R and python. See the Outputs section of the Guide for the complete list of outputs that you can now publish on Posit Cloud.
• Published Quarto and R Markdown documents open much faster.
• You can refresh Quarto and R Markdown documents published with their source code to refect the latest data. See the Refresh section in the Guide for details.
• You can also view their publishing history, including build info and logs for each revision. See View History in the Guide for details.
• Outputs can be opened and viewed without any of the Posit Cloud user interface present. See the Open Solo action in the Guide for details.

These changes are significant, but they by no means represent the end point for Posit Cloud publishing features. Look for more advances over the coming months as Posit Cloud continues to improve your ability to create, publish and host amazing data products!

New Plans & Pricing

We now offer a more a powerful, less expensive, Standard plan that replaces the Premium plan.

In addition, we provide a lower priced Basic plan, with sufficient capabilities for the data work many people do. Here’s how the plans compare.

	Basic Plan	Standard Plan	Premium Plan
Price	$25 / month	$75 / month	$99 / month
Compute hours	150 included / month	500 included / month	200 included / month
Max RAM	8 GB	32 GB	16 GB
Max CPUs	2	8	4

We also renamed our $5 / month Plus Plan to the Student Plan. It has the same price and same features as before, but you must be a student to qualify for purchase.

Note that if you are currently on the Premium plan, you will automatically get upgraded to the Standard plan in November and your monthly bill will drop to $75 / month. If you were paying a discounted rate for the Premium plan, you will continue to receive that discount for the next year. Look for an email from us with all the details.

Visit our Plans & Pricing page for more information on all our plans.

May 2023

Manage Organization Account Settings

You can now directly update your organization account’s name or owner via Account Settings.

See the Account Settings section of the Guide for more details.

Multi-member Subscriptions

Until now, account plans that covered more than one licensed member, e.g. a Premium organization account, or a Fee per Student Instructor plan, had to be paid for in advance for a fixed number of members and for a predetermined period of time. Not very flexible!

But now you can subscribe to any of these plans and adjust the number of licensed members, instructors and/or students for your account at any time.

Your changes take effect immediately and charges and credits are prorated based on the time remaining in your current billing cycle. You only pay for what you need, and you can easily adapt as your needs change over time.

To learn more, visit the Premium or Instructor plan pages, or check out the Manage Accounts section in the Guide.

April 2023

Data Connections

Do you need to access and analyze data in databases? It is now easy to create and share access to external data sources using Data Connections.

In any shared space, admins and moderators can create Data Connections that can be used by any member in any project within the space. Data Connections leverage the Posit Professional Drivers to connect to the database of your choice.

See External Databases within the Work with Data section of the Guide for more infomation on how to create and use Data Connections in your spaces.

February 2023

Publishing for All

All accounts can now publish outputs directly to Posit Cloud. You can create, host and share apps, documents and APIs right on Posit Cloud.

Apps

Documents

APIs

To try it out, follow the steps to Make a Shiny App in the Get Started section of the Posit Cloud Documentation.

To learn more about publishing, read the Publish Outputs section of the Guide.

January 2023

Terminology Update

We now refer to “project hours” as “compute hours”.

RStudio 2022.12.0

Posit Cloud has been updated to use version 2022.12.0 of the RStudio IDE.

2022

November 2022

RStudio Cloud is now Posit Cloud

We have changed our company name from RStudio to Posit. To learn more, visit posit.co.

As a result, RStudio Cloud is now Posit Cloud. Here’s what’s changed about the service.

• Our web address is now posit.cloud.
• Visiting rstudio.cloud will redirect you automatically to posit.cloud.
• The look of the site has changed to reflect the new company name and brand identity.
• There is no change to existing functionality - we will of course continue to add and improve features going forward.
• You do not have to change any links you have posted or shared in the past - all existing links to rstudio.cloud will redirect to posit.cloud and continue to work.
• New sharing links generated by the service are to posit.cloud.
• Invoices and emails will now come from Posit.

October 2022

Publishing

Beta Feature

You can now publish outputs directly to RStudio Cloud. Some of the types of outputs you can publish are:

• Shiny apps
• R Markdown documents
• Dash apps
• Flask apps

Until now, you could publish from RStudio Projects to other services, like RPubs, RStudio Connect or shinyapps.io. Now you can publish directly to RStudio Cloud as well, either from a Cloud RStudio project, or from an external environment like the RStudio IDE installed on your local computer.

Published outputs are included in the content listings within spaces, and can be managed, and organized in lists, like projects.

Publishing to RStudio Cloud is currently a beta feature. If you are a Premium, Instructor or Organization account holder, you can request access to the publishing beta.

How To

1. Go to the Account Overview page for your individual or organization account.

   

2. Click on the configure link to go to the Configure Beta Features page.

   

3. Click on the enable toggle switch to request access to publishing.

   

   You can also view the details of the publishing beta - we do recommend you read the list of known limitations included in the details before using the feature.

See the Publish Outputs section of the Guide for additional information on publishing.

Account Content Control

We have heard from a number of users that it is critical that they be able to retain control over all content created in their account. For example, if an employee leaves an organization, it may be important for the employer to retain access to the work they created in the organization’s account. Similarly, it may be important for a school to retain access to students’ work for some period of time following the completion of a course.

By default, the permission to transfer content out of an account is enabled. However, it is now very easy for an account owner or admin to revoke the permission.

How To

See the Control Account Content section of the Guide for how to revoke the transfer content permission for an account.

Note

Space and account admins can no longer distribute projects to members’ personal workspaces when they move projects, delete a space, or remove a member. A project author can still move individual projects with the Move Project action, or move all their projects to their personal workspace via the Leave Space action, assuming they have the permission to transfer content out of the account.

September 2022

RStudio Cloud is becoming Posit Cloud

Later this fall, we are changing our company name from RStudio to Posit. As part of this transition, RStudio Cloud will become Posit Cloud. Please see posit.co for more details on the name change.

Delete Space Update

As part of an ongoing effort to give account owners and admins more control over the content in their spaces, we have made a significant change to the behavior of the Delete Space action.

Note

Until now, when you deleted a space, all the projects in the space were distributed to the authors’ respective personal workspaces - that will no longer occur. Going forward, the projects in the space will be deleted, along with the space itself.

If you would like the authors of projects in a space to retain their work, have them move their projects out of the space before you delete it. They can move individual projects with the Move Project action, or move all their projects to their personal workspace via the Leave Space action.

Archive Space

If you have a space that is no longer in active use, for example a project space for a completed project, or a course space for a previous semester’s course, you can now archive it.

When you archive a space:

• All its projects are archived.
• All its members are removed.
• It no longer appears in the navigation sidebar.
• It cannot be accessed by any of its former members.

An archived space and its projects do not count against any of your account limits - but if you ever need to access it again, you can simply restore it.

See the Archive Space section of the Guide for additional information.

How To

To archive a space, select the Archive Space action from the Space menu.

August 2022

Improved Project Search

You can now search for projects by the project’s author, not just the project’s name.

How To

To search by author, type the author’s name into the search field and press the Return/Enter key.

July 2022

Archive Projects

Do you ever have projects you are no longer actively working on, but would like to keep around for future reference? If so, you can now move them into an archive.

Each space has its own archive, and you can move projects in and out of an archive as needed. Projects in an archive cannot be opened or edited, and do not count against any space or account projects limits. Note that in shared spaces, only admins and moderators can move content in and out of the space’s archive.

How To

To archive a project, select the Move to Archive action from the project menu.

To restore a project that is in an archive, select the Restore action. It will then appear in the space’s listings and can be opened and edited.

June 2022

Collapsible Header

Do you ever wish for a bit more vertical space when writing code - or just want fewer distractions on screen? You can now collapse the RStudio Cloud header with the click of a button.

How To

Click on the up arrow button on the right side of the header - the header will slide up off the screen.

To bring the header back, click on the down arrow button at the top right of the window.

April 2022

Collaborative Editing

Beta Feature

Up to 5 users can now access and edit a project at the same time.

When an admin or moderator of a space opens a project that another user is working on, they will now join that user in the project, rather than disconnecting their session.

You can see who else is working on a project - and the changes that one user makes are immediately displayed to other users.

Collaborative editing is currently a beta feature. If you are a Premium, Instructor or Organization account holder, you can enable collaborative editing for your account.

How To

1. Go to the Account Overview page for your individual or organization account.

   

2. Click on the configure link to go to the Configure Beta Features page.

   

3. Click on the toggle switch to enable collaborative editing.

   

   You can also view the details of any beta feature - we do recommend you read the included list of known limitations before using the feature.

See the Collaborative Editing section of the Guide for additional information.

March 2022

Project Lists

You can now organize the projects within a shared space using project lists. Project lists let you arrange and order the projects in a space to keep the work organized and easy to find, in the same way that playlists let you organize songs in a music app.

See the Project Lists section of the Guide for details on how to create, populate, and modify project lists.

January 2022

Students Pay Option for Instructors

If you want to use RStudio Cloud to teach, but are not in a position to cover costs for your students, you can now choose to have each student pay for their course access. See the Cloud Instructor page for more details on the option, but here are the basics:

• You, the instructor, sign up for the Instructor plan with the Students Pay option. You pay $15 / month.
• You create your course space and invite your students to the space.
• In order to work on projects in your space, a student must sign up for a paid subscription to Cloud - typically the Cloud Plus plan for $5 / month is the right option for students.
• If a student attempts to create or open a project in your course space and does not have a paid subscription, they will be prompted to sign up for one.
• Within your course space, you and your students have access to all premium features associated with the Instructor plan, and there are no usage charges for work done there.

See the Pick Your Plan section of the Guide for details on all the available Instructor plan options.

Easier Access to Project Settings

You can now change a project’s settings directly from any projects listing. Edit the project’s name or description, or change who can access it - without opening the project.

How To

1. In a projects listing, press the button to open any project’s menu - then choose Settings.

   

2. Use the Info and Access settings panels to view or edit the project’s settings.

   

For more info on project settings, see the Project Settings section of the Guide.

Faster Package Installation

We recently integrated RStudio Cloud with the RStudio Public Package Manager. Package Manager provides pre-built binaries for all packages on CRAN - as a result, you will see much faster package installs. You can learn more about RStudio Package Manager here.

New Layout & Project Filtering Options

• Project Lists Navigator

  You can now switch between different project lists via a navigation pane on the left hand side of the Projects area.

  

• New Filtering Options

  You can filter any project list according to the access level of the projects via a drop down menu.

  

• More Obvious Usage Area Access

  The Usage area for Your Workspace and shared spaces is now accessible via a text navigation item (rather than discreetly tucked away behind an icon).

  

• More Obvious Trash Access

  The trash for a space is now accessible via the Project Lists Navigator mentioned above (rather than via an icon in the header).

• Better Navigation on Smaller Screens

  On smaller screens, the different areas in your current context are accessible via a drop down menu in the header (rather than discreetly tucked away in the main navigation sidebar or user panel).

  

Maximum RAM Doubled

Cloud Premium and Instructor plans now allow you to allocate up to 16GB RAM per project, double the previous limit of 8GB.

How To

Visit the Project Resources section of the Guide to learn how to adjust the RAM and other resources allocated to a project.

2021

September 2021

Price Cut for Additional Hours

Last month we announced that we are able to increase the hours included with our plans thanks to improvements that let us run your projects more cost-effectively.

We’re happy to announce that those improvements have also enabled us to reduce the price for any hours you accrue in a month beyond those included with your plan. Beginning with your next invoice, the price for any additional project hours will be cut in half, from 20¢ to 10¢ per hour.

August 2021

Ubuntu 16.04 EOL on September 13

Starting on September 13, 2021, all projects still running Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) will be automatically upgraded to Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal) the next time they are opened. Most projects are unaffected by this change.

Please see this community article for more information.

To see if your project is still running Xenial, or to upgrade it manually before September 13th, press the button to open the project settings pane then click on the System tab:

More Disk Space per Project

We have restructured how projects are stored on disk to give you much more space to work with. Each project can now store up to 20GB of files, data and packages on disk, up from the prior 3GB for files and data, and 3GB for packages.

Note that this change applies to all new projects - existing projects, and copies of existing projects, will continue to use the older disk layout. If you have a space with an existing base project, and you want new projects in the space to use the expanded disk layout, you’ll need to create a new base project for the space. Similarly, for existing assignment projects, you will need to create new assignment projects if you want the students’ copies to use the new, expanded disk layout.

More Hours in a Day? No. More Hours in Our Plans? Yes!

Thanks to improvements that let us run your projects more cost-effectively, we have increased the number of project hours included in our plans per month, as follows:

• Instructor plan: 300 hours
• Premium plan: 200 hours
• Plus plan: 75 hours
• Free plan: 25 hours

For the Free and Plus plans, we have also have increased the maximum number of projects: you can now create up to 50 projects before reaching your account limit.

July 2021

Jupyter Projects

Beta Feature

Jupyter Notebook projects are now available to members of our beta program. If you are a Premium, Instructor or Organization account holder, you can request access to the beta program. Once you are in the program, you can create and work with Jupyter projects as easily as RStudio IDE projects.

How To

To request access, click on the New Project button, then select New Jupyter Project from the menu that appears.

April 2021

Lots of new features in RStudio Cloud recently! Here are some highlights.

Updated User Panel

The user panel has a new look, and now includes some at-a-glance information about your account.

How To

Click on your icon/name on the right side of the header to open the user panel.

Notifications

You will see a notification indicator on your icon/name in the header when we have important information to tell you about your account.

How To

Click your icon/name to view the full message in the user panel.

We will also send notification emails when you reach your project hours limit (Cloud Free plan only) or your included hours for the month (Cloud Plus, Premium or Instructor plans).

View Usage Data by Account Usage Period

In addition to viewing usage data by calendar month, you can also view usage data by account usage period. This option is available for all accounts/spaces you own.

How To

To see this for your account, for example, click your icon/name in the header to open the user panel, and then click on the “project hours” bar to go to the Account Usage page.

View Usage Data for Your Workspace

How To

Navigate to Your Workspace and press the usage button in the header.

Space Ownership Information

You can see who owns a space in the space header, navigation sidebar, New/Copy Space dialogs, and on all space About pages. The owner of the space is responsible for resources used in each space.

Teaching with Cloud Guide Update

If you’re using RStudio Cloud to teach workshops or classes, this is for you! Teaching with Cloud will walk you through our recommended setup and workflow, and includes answers to frequently asked questions.

Change Operating System for Existing Projects

You can now upgrade any project’s OS to Ubuntu 20.04. All projects created prior to March 2021 use Ubuntu 16.04, which we will stop supporting later this year. When that happens, we will automatically upgrade any project still using Ubuntu 16.04 the next time it is opened.

How To

To change the OS version, press the button to open the project settings pane, then click on the System tab.

March 2021

Project Export

Export the contents of a project directly from the project list – no need to open the project first.

How To

Click “Export” next to the project in the project list that you wish to download. After a short while you will be provided with a link to download the project.

Upgraded Operating System for New Projects

New projects now use Ubuntu version 20.04. Existing projects, and copies of existing projects, will continue to use version 16.04. In the near future, you will be able to upgrade your projects manually.

After Ubuntu version 16.04 reaches its end of life later this year, all existing projects will automatically be upgraded to 20.04.

This upgrade includes an updated set of system packages that are installed before any R packages are installed.

February 2021

Cloud Plus Plan

Our Cloud Plus plan is now available for $5/month. Cloud Plus includes all the features of our Cloud Free plan, plus 50 75 project hours per month. Any additional project hours are billed at 20¢ 10¢ per hour.

If the Cloud Free features meet your needs, but you use more than 15 25 project hours a month, this is likely the right plan for you. For more information, please visit the Plans & Pricing page.

Numbers updated week of August 30, 2021 to reflect revised plans’ project hours and price per hour.

January 2021

RStudio 1.4

RStudio Cloud has been updated to use version 1.4 of the RStudio IDE.

Python 3.8

For users using python (for example, via the reticulate package), RStudio Cloud has been updated to use python 3.8 (upgraded from python 3.5).

2020

December 2020

Project Memory Gauge

See how much of your project’s allocated memory is currently in use: when you open a project you will find a project memory gauge in the header. This gauge updates roughly every ten seconds.

Note that reclaiming unused memory is controlled by R and the operating system - you may see uncanny fluctuations in the gauge as the system manages memory.

November 2020

Invoices

We’ll always send you an email about upcoming invoices; now you can access past invoices for your paid, monthly subscription in RStudio Cloud too.

How To

1. Click on your icon/name on the right side of the header
2. Select your account
3. Click on Invoices in the header

October 2020

Background Execution Time

By default, a project may run code in the background without interaction for up to 1 hour. If you have a paid plan, you can now increase a project’s background execution time, up to 48 hours.

How To

To control max background execution time, press the button to open the project settings pane, then click on the Resources tab.

August 2020

Link your GitHub Account

You can now link a GitHub account to your RStudio Cloud account and use that to create new projects from GitHub.

How To

Click “New Project from Git Repo” and follow the instructions.

General Availability

RStudio Cloud is now generally available for use and purchase. We offer a free plan and a number of paid, premium plans - please visit our Plans & Pricing page to learn more.

We have also updated our method for calculating project hours to reduce your usage charges. After 15 minutes of not interacting with a project, its session goes idle. We do not charge for usage while a session is idle, even though its container remains deployed for additional time.

To view your current plan and a summary of your usage for the current period, visit your Account Overview page.

How To

Click on your name on the right side of the header to reveal the user panel, then select your account.

June 2020

General Availability Announcement

RStudio Cloud will move from beta to general availability on August 3, 2020. Please visit our Plans & Pricing page to view the free and premium plans that will be available. Note that anyone interested in an organization or instructor plan can request a quote from that page at this time.

May 2020

Space Usage Metrics

You can access usage metrics for any shared space where your role is admin or moderator. You can view summary information for the space, and data for individual members and their projects.

How To

Navigate to the space and press the button in the header.

January 2020

Beta!

We are very happy to announce that RStudio Cloud is now in beta. Over the past year, we’ve made significant and fundamental improvements to our underlying platform to ensure that Cloud performs reliably, even as more and more people use the system. As a signal of that increased reliablity, and of our increased confidence in the service, we are upgrading our label from alpha to beta. We still have a lot to do, but this is a significant milestone and we wanted to let you all know. Thanks for all your support and help along the way!

2019

December 2019

Account Usage Data

You can now see usage information for your account, at the account level and segmented by space. Usage data is available from November 1, 2019, and is shown using your browser’s timezone.

How To

Click on your name on the right side of the header to reveal the user panel, then select your account. Usage information is available in the account context.

October 2019

Automatic Trash Removal

Starting October 31, 2019, we will begin permanently deleting any projects that have been in the trash for 30 days (or more).

May 2019

Account Spaces

View and manage all the spaces owned by your account, even ones that you are not an explicit member of.

How To

Click on your name on the right side of the header to reveal the user panel, then select the account from the Accounts list. You’ll see a page listing the account’s spaces - you can select any space to view detailed info about it. You can also create new spaces, or delete or copy existing ones on this page.

March 2019

Share Project Link

If you want to share a link to a project, it’s easy to do. When the project is in Your Workspace, you need to know the email address of the person you’re sharing it with. If the project is in a shared space, you can pick the people to send it to from the list of space members (assuming you have permission to see them).

How To

Press the button and choose Share Project Link from the Project menu.

February 2019

Relaunch Project

If you are working on a project, and it fails to load or becomes completely unresponsive, you can relaunch the project. Depending on the underlying problem, relaunching the project may fix it and let you continue.

How To

Press the button and choose Relaunch Project from the Project menu.

2018

December 2018

Search Members

In larger spaces, it’s quick and easy to find a particular member by name.

How To

Go to the Members page, type into the search box above the listing (either for members or invitations), and press enter.

Copy Space

Space admins can copy existing spaces. All projects shared with everyone in the original space will be copied over to the new space. Members of the original space are not copied over - you will be the only initial member of the new space.

How To

Press the button and choose Copy Space from the Space menu.

Save Copy Performance Improvement

Saving a permanent copy of a temporary copy is fast like lightning!

Delete Project

You can delete an open project directly (before, you had to go back to the Projects listing).

How To

Press the button and choose Delete Project from the Project menu.

November 2018

Assignments

If you are an instructor using a space for your course or workshop, you can mark a project as an assignment. With assignments, each student gets their own persistent copy when they open the project, eliminating the possibility that they forget to save their work from a temporary copy. See the Assignments section of the Guide in the Posit Cloud documentation to learn more.

What’s New

We have added this What’s New page as a way of letting you know about significant changes to RStudio Cloud. The What’s New icon in the navigation bar will turn orange to let you know when we’ve added new items to this page that you haven’t read yet.

October 2018

Higher space limits

By default, private spaces now allow you to have up to 10 members and 25 projects. Your personal space (titled “Your Workspace”) continues to allow you to create a virtually unlimited number of projects.

Performance Improvements

The changes we have rolled out over the past month have significantly improved our performance under heavy load. We will continue to monitor and improve the performance of the system - please let us know if you experience any issues via the RStudio Community site.