R Installation

Installing R on a Mac

This page is based on the installation of R on a Mac computer using the Firefox web browser. The process took place on August 20, 2018. The standard version of R at that time was 3.5.1. Please understand that web pages change, software changes, and installation systems change. Thus, what is recorded here, although true at the moment of recording, may have changed by the time you read this.

Also, as I hope is obvious, the images below have been annotated, in GREEN, to show you where you need to point and click. The images have been shrunk for display, but most browsers will allow you to see the expanded version if you right click on the image and ask to view the image.

Please note that I am not a Mac user. As such, the steps shown here, while accurate, may not be the fastest way to accomplish a task. Feel free to to improvise if you know what you are doing on a Mac. I certainly do not.

To install R, we will go to the Comprehensive R Archive Network at the cran.r-project.org web site. As of May 22, 2022 that link was broken. Try the link alternative link to R install. This should open a page, the top of which should appear as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

Since we are trying to install R on a Mac machine, we will click on the "Download R for (Mac) OS X" link on that page. Doing so should take us to a new page, the top of which is shown in Figure 2.

There are many choices for us, depending upon the operating system that we are using. The machine used here was running El Capitan which was a follow-on to Yosemite which was a follow-on Mavericks. Therefore, we click on the R–3.5.1.pkg link on this page.

Figure 2

This opens a small window, shown in Figure 3, that would allow us an early exit if we had made a mistake, or allows us to continue by clicking on the "Save File" button, which we do.

Figure 3

Remember that this page captures the process using the Firefox browser. Furthermore, that browser was set to ask the user for the location to hold the downloaded file. That is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4

For the process we are doing here we will just accept that default and click on the Save button to move on to Figure 5. Figure 5 highlights the indication, circled in green, of the download progress. (The indicator blinks while the download is in progress. If you click on the indicator at that time it will display the actual progress. The download took so little time here that I could not capture an example of it in progress.)

Figure 5

Figure 6 shows the top of the Firefox browser after the download is completed. The progress indicator shown in Figure 5 is now a steady down arrow. Because we want to run the downloaded file, we first to click on that down arrow to display the files that have been downloaded.

Figure 6

Figure 7 shows the one file that we have downloaded. We can click on that item to run it.

Figure 7

Note that if you are using a different browser, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Chrome, etc., then there will be some way for you to do the same thing. Even if you cannot find that similar way, you could use the Download icon on the bottom applications bar to find and run the file.

Once you have started to run the program it will open the screen shown in Figure 8. The actual "steps" to the installation are listed on the left side of the window. This is but the first step, giving an introduction. We will just click on the "Continue" button to move to the next step.

Figure 8

In Figure 9 we see the "Read Me" information. This is actually informative, but for us, at this point, we really just want to install R on this machine without any other concerns so we just click on then "Continue" button.

Figure 9

This brings up the Software License Agreement shown in Figure 10. Of course this is worth reading. Then, click on the "Continue" button.

Figure 10

Having pointed us to the Software License Agreement in Figure 10, the installation program now asks us for a formal agreement with that license. To move on we click on the "Agree" button.

Figure 11

The window shown in Figure 12 allows us to decide if we want to use the standard settings for the software or to choose to customize the installatio. We will just take the standared settings by clicking on the Install button.

Figure 12

The screen shown in Figure 13, came up during my installation. It is simply a verification that I am the authorized user of this computer. If you get a similar screen, just supply your password for this computer and then click on the Install Software button.

Figure 13

The screen shown in Figure 14 just shows the progress of the installation. As software installations go, this should not take too long.

Figure 14

The installation of R on the computer completes with the screen shown in Figure 15.

Figure 15

To leave the screen shown in Figure 15, just click on the "Close" button.

Although the software is now installed, we might want to make it easier for us to start it. To that end, in Figure 16, we have opened the "Finder". The quick link to Finder is generally found at the left end of the quick start bar at the bottom of the screen. Point to that icon, shown in Figure 16, and click on it.

Figure 16

That will put the Finder menu at the top of the screen. Point to the Go option and click on it.

Figure 17

The drop down window shows many options, but we want to find and click on the Applications option.

Figure 18

In the list of Applications we find the R item and click on it as shown in Figure 19.

Figure 19

R starts, and when it does start it displays the "splash" screen shown in Figure 20. Toward the bottom of the screen you will see that there are hints on how to get a demo, how to get help, and even how to quit. We will just quit the system.

Figure 20

All we were interested in doing at this time was to be sure that R was installed and working. To quit R we just type q() at the prompt on the window. This is shown in Figure 21 below.

Figure 21

Having typed the q() command we press the "Enter" key to tell R to perform the command.

Quitting R is not a step to be taken lightly. Therefore, R takes this opportunity to ask if you are really serious (you could "Cancel" the action) and if you are serious, then do you want R to save the "workspace". Saving the workspace should allow you to restart R later and at least restore any values (i.e., work) that you have done to this point. We will talk about this in more detail in a later web page.

We have not done anything so we might as well just tell R to save the workspace by clicking on the "Save" button.

Figure 22