Introducing Multiple Console Sessions!

[dhruvisompura]

You’ve been asking for the ability to have more than one console session in Positron (#3173) and we’ve been hard at work making this happen! The ability to have multiple console sessions for different runtimes or environments is now ready for testing from a larger audience. We’d love for you to try it and let us know what you think!

You can try out the new feature in the 2025.04.0-64 pre-release build.

On this page you’ll learn how to enable this experimental feature and how to manage multiple console sessions.

Note

We are currently actively working on how multiple console sessions interact with diagnostics/completion for your R/Python code. Be aware that as of build 2025.04.0-64, your diagnostics will be generated using the first console that was created. Follow along at #6310 for improvements in this area!

Enabling the Feature

By default, the ability to have more than one console session is disabled for now. To try out the feature, go to Positron’s settings and search for console.multipleConsoleSessions.

If you like editing the settings JSON file, you can add ”console.multipleConsoleSessions”: true to the file.

Once the feature has been enabled, reload Positron via the Reload Window command.

Creating a New Console Session

To create a new console session, click on the + icon button in the console tab list. This will launch a new quick pick menu where you can select the runtime for the new console session.

You can also create a new console session by clicking on the New Session... entry in the session switcher which will launch the same quick pick menu.

Note

we have limited the number of console sessions you can have running at the same time to 15 while this experimental feature is in development.

Deleting a Console Session

If you have multiple console sessions running, you can delete a console session by hovering over the console session entry and then clicking the Trash icon button in the console tab list.

If you have only one console session running, you can delete it by clicking on the Trash icon button in the console pane action bar.

Switching Between Console Sessions

To switch between console sessions, click on the console session entry in the console tab list.

You can also switch between console sessions by clicking on the session switcher in the top right and selecting the console session you want to switch to from the list of running console sessions.

Console Session Status

When you have more than one console session running, you can see the status of each console session in the console tab list.

A console session can be in one of the following states:

• Idle: The console session is not running any code.
• Busy: The console session is running code.
• Shutdown: The console session has shutdown.

Console Session Information Button

To see information about the active console session, click on the “Info” icon button in the console pane action bar. This includes shortcuts to the relevant output channels for that session.

Feedback and What’s Next

Before this feature moves out of experimental status we’d love to hear your feedback on how this feature is working for you. Please let us know if you encounter any issues or have any suggestions for improvements.

If you like what you see in this feature and want to give some feedback, please leave a comment here!

[Aariq]

Is there a way currently (or plans to have a way) to launch new consoles programmatically? I'm specifically thinking of some equivalent to rstudioapi::jobRunScript()

[juliasilge]

I opened #6720 to track and prioritize this type of request. Want to chime in there with your use case? i.e. do you really want to spawn a new console, or do you have a bit of code that you want to run in a fresh, separate session?

[Aariq]

This doesn't seem to work with an SSH connection right now. I see all the UI for starting a new session, but nothing happens when I try to start one.

[Aariq]

Also with a remote connection, if I delete the only running console with the trash icon, I can't start a console without restarting positron

[Aariq]

Ok, hm, after re-starting a few times now all is working as expected. Sorry, can't reproduce this I guess?

[juliasilge]

Let us know if you continue to see bad or flaky behavior here; we do expect this to work!

[Aariq]

With multiple R consoles open, tooltips for function arguments are repeated.

With two R consoles:

With three R consoles:

[rmflight]

Yep, I'm seeing repeated function arguments, and also repeated variables when doing any tab completion.

[juliasilge]

Ah, this is related to what Dhruvi shared about the diagnostics not yet updating console session to console session! LSPs are not yet getting shut down and started when you switch between console sessions. We are tracking shutting down and starting LSPs in #6310, and I'll add a note about these completions.

[ZhimingYe]

In dark theme, the left button is brighter than the right one :)

But in light theme, they both have the same color.

[juliasilge]

I opened #6730 to track and prioritize this work. Thanks for the report!

[ZhimingYe]

Some other feedback that should be of very low priority (probably extremely low priority). I hope these won’t disrupt the busy team—these are just for reference.

1.When the sidebar is at its minimum width, the delete button gets obscured. Could consider referencing the design of the native terminal in VS Code?

2.The folder directory starts truncating even when there is still plenty of space available.

[jmcphers]

Issue 2 is logged here: #6595

[moa-incom]

Awesome feature!
It would be nice if you could give each session a title/name to distinguish them from each other. Or the very least show the session id in the console session status.
Thank you!

[juliasilge]

Can you say a bit more about where you are picturing us surfacing this information? Right now you can get to the session ID via this button:

Were you wanting to be able to see the session ID somewhere in the UI all the time, without a click? Can you say a bit more about your use case?

[midleman]

We’ve added a session counter for cases where runtimes are identical. This update, included in our next release, ensures clear differentiation between sessions across multiple areas in the interface. I think that is what you are asking for?

[moa-incom]

Sorry for the late reply.
Yes, it is in fact the session counter distinction I was looking for. I still believe it would be a good feature to be able to give each session a 'nickname' so instead of it just being "Python 3.11.10 (Global) - 2" in the above screenshot, you could rename it to something that was maybe more fitting for the type of script you're running.
Thank you! :)

[ntluong95]

Should the runtime be able to rename instead of numbering? I started to use multiple runtimes now, sometimes I use for testing purpose as I don't want to populate my variable pane with testing object then need to remove them individually, having a separate session is really nice that I can throw away easily after that. Also sometimes I run 2 scripts in parallel so it would be nice to rename the runtime to distinguish them

[juliasilge]

We are tracking improvements to the labeling strategy in #6825; I'll add your vote for renaming there. Thanks!

[ZhimingYe]

During the past few days of trial, I observed a phenomenon that might be difficult to reproduce, but I’ve seen it more than once:
1. I was running an R task that couldn’t be easily interrupted (specifically, tasks in RStudio where clicking the STOP button prompts a restart of RStudio, and the task can only be forcefully stopped by completely terminating it).
2. In order to interrupt this task, I clicked the “trash can” icon in the sidebar to try to end it.
3. When the “Force quit” window appeared (sometimes), I clicked “Force quit.”
4. At that point, it seemed that the console got stuck, so I clicked the restart button (displayed as a circular arrow icon ♻️).

After this series of actions, I was unable to create any new R sessions, even though the multi-session console was enabled.
I believe there might be an issue with the logic of the multi-session console. Regardless of the state of the old console, opening a new session should be allowed. Please watch the video below:

Positron_mc_cantstartfeedback.mp4

And I also can not delete the existed R session:

CantDeleteSession.mp4

[juliasilge]

Thank you so much to everyone here who has been willing to try out the new experimental support for multiple console sessions! 🙌

I want to highlight that the new release available today at https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/releases/tag/2025.04.0-173 includes some major improvements to this feature, especially related to LSP management (diagnostics, completions, outlines, etc). If you are able to get this new release and continue trying out multisession consoles, that would be incredibly helpful to us.

I do want to highlight there are still some known issues that we are continuing to address. You can see all our issues on this feature, but I especially want to let you know that we still are addressing problems around:

• interpreter restarts: R: LSPs aren't activating a restart #6902
• the "no workspace" state: Multisession: Pyright diagnostics not updating without open workspace #6936