Launching R Shiny in browser

[howardbaik]

Is there a setting to automatically launch R Shiny apps in the browser?

In RStudio, I could set options(shiny.launch.browser = TRUE) in my .Rprofile file, but this doesn't seem to work in Positron. I suspect a Positron setting might be overriding this R option.

[sharon-wang]

Hi @howardbaik! Does configuring the setting shiny.previewType to external do what you're looking for?

[howardbaik]

Hey @sharon-wang, thanks for looking into this.

Unfortunately, that setting still opens my Shiny app in the Viewer pane of Positron.

[sharon-wang]

Just to confirm, do you have the Shiny extension (posit.shiny) installed? The setting shiny.previewType comes from the Shiny extension and should apply when running the Shiny: Run Shiny App command in the Command Palette, or when using the play button in the editor actions to "Run Shiny App".

The Shiny extension does not seem to support options(shiny.launch.browser = TRUE) though -- if you would like to see this behaviour, please open a feature request issue in the Shiny VS Code extension repo: https://github.com/posit-dev/shiny-vscode/issues.

If you're running the Shiny app via an R Console in Positron, options(shiny.launch.browser = TRUE) is not currently supported. I've opened an issue to capture this feature request: #8450.

[howardbaik]

Is the Shiny VS Code Extension the same as the Shiny Extension that is available in the Positron Extension?

If they are the same, then yes, I have the Shiny extension installed, and I can see the expected behavior when running the Shiny: Run Shiny App command in the Command Palette, or when using the play button in the editor actions to "Run Shiny App".

I am primarily running the Shiny app via an R Console since I'm using the golem framework (golem::run_dev()) to run my Shiny apps.

Thank you for opening that issue! I'll be closely following it.