Positron Installation and Setup

Overview

This unit covers the installation and setup of Positron.

Goals

• Download and install the appropriate Positron build for your platform.
• Get Positron running on your machine.

Reading

Installation

Make sure you reviewed the information on the Positron install page to ensure your computer is ready for the install.

Positron can be freely downloaded from its website. Pick the version that matches your operating system and architecture.

As of December 2025, there is not yet a Windows ARM build of Positron available. If you have a Windows ARM machine, the Windows x64 version won’t work. But you can get a pre-release version (which worked for us).

It should be possible for you to install Positron without having admin rights. However, your mileage might vary and it is possible that you might need administrator rights after all to install it (even for the user install on Windows). If you need to use a computer on which you do not have admin rights, and your admin is not willing to install Positron, remember that you can do everything we discuss and teach using a different editor/IDE. You might not be able to exactly follow the instructions we provide, but you should be able to get everything working in pretty much any IDE.

If you have choices during install for Positron to do certain things (e.g. get an ‘Open with Positron’ option in Windows Explorer), we recommend you choose to have all of those options enabled. Definitely don’t de-select any pre-selected ones, unless you know what you are doing.

Setup

Once Positron is installed, you can open it. On first startup, Positron sets up several pre-installed extensions (we’ll discuss extensions shortly). During that process, you might be asked several questions, such as if you want to allow connections to networks. You should basically approve all of them to ensure Positron will fully work.

You might run again into administrative issues. If you get requests from your computer to log in as admin, do so or have your admin help you through this part as well. Things might still work even without some of these permissions, but it is better to have it fully set up and allow Positron access to everything it needs.

Once all the initial start-up things are done, Positron is ready to go. You should see the main screen with several different areas (called panes or panels), and a menu bar on the top and another one on the left. We’ll discuss the different parts of Positron shortly.

You might see one or several red notification dots on some of the icons on the left, asking you to update things or log in. It is generally a good idea to do all that. We’ll discuss some of that in a bit more detail in further units.

Updating Positron

Positron should check for updates automatically when you open it. If you don’t like automatic updates you can turn it off. If you want to check for updates manually, click the “Check for Updates” button in the menu bar under Help. Since you just installed it, there shouldn’t be any updates.

For now, just close Positron, and in the next unit, we’ll re-open it and talk about extensions.

Summary

We discussed how to install Positron and how to keep it updated. You should now be ready to use it.

Further Resources

• Positron Get Started Guide – official documentation

Test yourself

Where should you download the Positron installer to ensure you get the correct and most up‑to‑date version?

From Positron’s official websiteFrom an arbitrary third‑party download mirrorFrom the CRAN repository used for R packagesIt is pre‑installed on all modern operating systems

Always use the official Positron website to obtain the installer. Third‑party sites may host outdated or modified versions.

• True
• False
• False
• False

During the very first startup, Positron may display several permission or configuration dialogs. What is the recommended action?

Cancel every prompt and close Positron immediatelyDisable all suggested features to keep the interface minimalApprove the prompts so Positron can fully configure itselfUninstall Positron and reinstall it in “safe mode”

Accepting the prompts allows Positron to finish its setup and ensures full functionality.

• False
• False
• True
• False

How does Positron typically handle updates after it has been installed?

You must manually download and reinstall Positron for every updateIt automatically checks for updates on startup and offers to install themUpdates can only be installed through your operating system’s app storePositron cannot be updated; you must wait for the next major release

Positron checks for updates each time it starts and prompts you to update if a new version is available.

• False
• True
• False
• False

Practice

There’s nothing to practice here. We hope the install worked. You can open and close Positron a few times, just to make sure it all works well 😁.