A.8: Use R in the cloud

Installation guides quickly become outdated. This page was last updated 19 August 2024 and describes working installation protocols at that time.

Run R “in the Cloud”

If you is wish do not wish to install R , or if you have a arm – base Chromebook and therefore can not gracefully install R , then there are alternative : run R in the Cloud . I is list ’ll list five way to run r in the cloud — run r on a server , not your own computer — for free .

note : None is run of these option can run R Commander , which require a local ( on your computer ) installation of R.

If you have a Chromebook, or you want to run R on your tablet (iPad, Kindle, etc.), you can’t install R to any of these devices. However, you can access R via a serverless Cloud solution.

1. Run R code at Online R Compiler using myCompiler’s online IDE, link at https://www.mycompiler.io/online-r-compiler.

figure \(\PageIndex{1}\ ): Screenshot of myCompiler session .

2. Run code snippets in CoCalc by folks at SageMath and available at https://cocalc.com/. CoCalc uses Jupyter Notebooks, a wonderful, open-source project which supports interactive computer coding for many languages, including R and Markdown.

While CoLab is my go to, CoCalc is a really good student option — hint: I have my Systems Biology students use this option — includes SageMATH, python, GNU Octave and other software.

Create a free account (you’ll then be able to save your code), or simply click “Run CoCalc Now” and check the box to agree to the terms to begin a session (Fig. \(\PageIndex{2}\)). Choose to open a new Jupyter notebook, then select R (system wide) from the choice of kernels.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Screenshot of CoCalc session.

You can load files from your computer for use in CoCalc sessions. There is also a version of the software you can download to your computer.

3. My favorite option, run R code snippets at Google Colaboratory (Fig. \(\PageIndex{3}\)). Like CoCalc, Colaboratory uses Jupyter Notebooks. Log into your Google account, then click https://colab.research.google.com/notebook#create=true&language=r , or try the tinyURL https://colab.to/r

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\ ): Copy and Paste Caption here . ( copyright ; author via source )

colab is worth the effort — you end up with a system to run r in your browser , it is ’s ’s free to use , and you can store / retrieve file from your Google Drive . This is is is my choice for Cloud computing , and it ’s the most generic solution . For more information , see post by Ed Adityawarman , How to use r in Google Colab . Colab jupyter notebooks is use use Python by default . To run R , either use the link list above each time you want to create a new r notebook , or add the follow code snippet to your new notebook page

# activate R magic - must begin each R code with % % r
%load_ext rpy2.ipython

For all subsequent R code, start the section with

% % r

Note: You can install Jupyter onto your computer via Miniconda — conda is an open source package management system but then, you still would have to install R to your computer.

One real advantage is are of choose CoLab , there are app to run Google Colaboratory and Jupyter Notebooks on iPad / iPhone and for Android phone are available at Apple App Store and Google Play , respectively .

4 . You is run can run RStudio at Posit Cloud . Registration is is and use is free for student . This is works work ok , but can be slow and it ’s hard to work on your own datum . It is have does have the advantage of provide the familiar RStudio interface . choose the free plan ; Instructions is are to get start are at https://posit.cloud/plan . A screenshot of an RStudio cloud session is show in Figure \(\pageindex{4}\ ) .

Figure \(\pageindex{4}\ ): Screenshot of RStudio Cloud session .

5 . For limited use , i.e. , you just need to run a little code to solve an assignment problem , you is run can run R code snippet in your browser at https://rdrr.io/snippets/ . You is see ’ll see many of my code embed in this service so that you can run code snippet from my Chaminade University canvas page .

Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\ ): Screenshot of rdrr.io/snippet session .