R for macOS Developers

All software on this page is strictly experimental and subject to acceptance of the supplied R license agreement and the disclaimer at the end of the page.

Starting with R 4.0.0 alpha we are building R using standard Apple tools (Xcode 12.4) and GNU Fortran 8.2 from fxcoudert and the target is macOS 10.13 (High Sierra). All dependent static libraries are available in the libs-4 directory. Please make sure you remove any modifications to build flags from your home since no custom compilers are used anymore. For more information about alternative OpenMP options (as in older version) see the openmp page of this site.

Apple silicon update: it is now possible to build R for the Apple silicon arm64 architecture (new Macs with the M1 processor) - see our R developer blog post and the instructions in the R manual. R 4.1.0 has been released both for the Intel architecture (High Sierra build) as well as for arm64 (Big Sur build) - and more details on the latter in the Apple silicon section. Note that the tools are still highly experimental (due to lack of stable Fortran) so the arm build is also experimental and things may change as we go. That said, our current Intel releases work just fine on the new Macs as well using Rosetta 2.

Index

• Nightly builds of R for Mac OS X
• Nightly builds of the R.app GUI
• Tools for R development
• Most current R manuals
• Sources for tools and libraries
• Legacy OS X support
• Other binaries and tools (e.g. RSwitch, Graphviz, GTK+, ..)
• Will R Work on Apple Silicon? (Information on the status of the port to Apple's new M1 architecture.)

Nightly builds for macOS

R framework

Important: The big-sur and monterey builds are compatible with the M1 arm-based Macs only. Intel Macs are supported by the high-sierra build which works on any macOS >=10.13 including Big Sur. The Monterey build is likely temporary while we are testing new macOS 12 virtualization for our build setup and is only intended for testing at this point.

The installer image (*.pkg) is packaged exactly the same way as the CRAN release of R (including the GUI) and it will update your R version (unless you use pkgutil - see instructions during installation and/or the "Multiple versions" section of the R Installation and Administration manual).

Alternatively, you can use the tar-ball (*.tar.gz) in the table above. The tar-ball must be unpacked in the root directory using:

$ tar fvxz R*.tar.gz -C /

NOTE: The tar-ball does not contain the GUI (see below for a separate download), it only contains files under /Library/Frameworks/R.framework so either run it via /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/bin/R or create a convenience symlink if desired. The installer includes Tcl/Tk package which will install in /usr/local. It is optional (only needed for the tcltk R package) and can be unchecked at installation time.

If you see any issues with the builds, please contact Simon Urbanek (the macOS maintainer of R) or report on the R-SIG-Mac mailing list.

For old OS X El Capitan nightly builds of R 3.x.x please see the old OS X builds page.

Mac OS X GUI

To install, open the image and drag the R icon to your Applications folder. Alternatively the GUI can be run directly off that image without copying if you just want to test it. Build configurations with "64" suffix are 64-bit builds, all others are 32-bit (except for Debug). If you want to use both, rename one of them or place them in different directories.

Tools

CRAN macOS master

Apple silicon (aka arm64, aarch64, M1)

The big-sur arm64 build of R requires XQuartz 2.8.0_rc1 or higher to use the X11 components.

Legacy R

Other binaries

• GTK+ 2.24.17 framework - 64-bit build of GTK+ 2.24.17, necessary for binary R packages that use GTK+ version 2 (such as RGtk2+). R 3.0.0 and higher, Snow Leopard build
  Download: GTK_2.24.17-X11.pkg (ca. 41MB)
   
• GTK+ 2.18.5 framework - universal build of GTK+ 2.18.5, necessary for binary R packages that use GTK+ version 2 (such as RGtk2+). R 2.10.0 - 2.15.3, Leopard build
  Download: GTK_2.18.5-X11.pkg (ca. 58MB)
   
• RSwitch - a small GUI that allows you to switch between R versions quickly (if you have multiple versions of R framework installed).
  Download: RSwitch-1.2.dmg (ca 67kB, universal, updated 2011/03/24 to support R 2.13.0 and up)
  Sources: RSwitch-1.2.tar.gz (Xcode project and sources)
  

  NOTE: Bob Rudis is maintaining a new version of a tool which has RSwitch functionality and more - see 3rd party RSwitch replacement (NOT related to R-Foundation or CRAN!).

More external libraries for R 4.0.0 and higher can be found in the /libs-4/ directory. For older versions see the /libs/ directory.

Disclaimer