Canonical data viewer and plot integration still open in external R windows with vscode-R 3.0.0

Environment

OS: Windows 11
VS Code: latest version
vscode-R: 3.0.0
R: 4.6.1
R console: arf 0.5.3

Problem

The VS Code-R session integration does not seem to be working correctly. In particular:

View(df) opens the native R data viewer in a separate Windows window instead of opening the data frame in the VS Code data viewer.
plot(...) opens a separate native R Graphics device window instead of displaying the plot inside VS Code.

This seems to indicate that the R session watcher/session integration is still not attaching correctly.

Steps to reproduce

For example, run:

x <- 1:10
y <- x^2

df <- data.frame(x, y)

View(df)

plot(x, y, type = "b", main = "Test Plot")

@leanhdung1994

I can reproduce on macOS with a few specific steps.

Open a directory in VS Code - be sure there are no active terminals.
Create an R terminal r.createRTerm. [sess] Connected to VS Code should be printed. View() and plot() should work as expected.

Quit VS Code without closing the active R terminal. Or swap to a different directory workbench.action.openRecent (ctrl + r) without closing the active R terminal.
Open VS Code again or ctrl + r back to the original directory, sess shows an IPC error.

Run the same commands as earlier. Now, XQuartz pops up instead.

For me, I can fix by killing that old terminal and then making a new R terminal. Running the same commands shows the intended Viewer.

@leanhdung1994 interestingly I cannot reproduce this on Windows. Do you have sess installed?

@grcatlin

@grcatlin I followed your first two steps and encountered an error

Yes, sess is already installed in my laptop

I have run some commands for diagnostics

+  # Environment variables the extension set
+  # Environment variables the extension set
+  Sys.getenv()[grep("^SESS_|^JGD_", names(Sys.getenv()))]
+  
+  # Discovery file: exists? contents?
+  f <- Sys.getenv("SESS_DISCOVERY_FILE")
+  file.exists(f)
+  cat(readLines(f, warn = FALSE), sep = "\n")
+  
+  # Does the pipe from the discovery file exist? (copy the pipe name from its "endpoint")
+  "vscode-r-7405fda80815652a" %in% list.files("//./pipe/")
+  
+  # The failing call, with a full traceback
+  sess::connect()
+  warnings()
[1] "R version 4.6.1 (2026-06-24 ucrt)"
R version 4.6.1 (2026-06-24 ucrt)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64
Running under: Windows 11 x64 (build 26200)

Matrix products: default
  LAPACK version 3.12.1

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.utf8  LC_CTYPE=English_United States.utf8    LC_MONETARY=English_United States.utf8 LC_NUMERIC=C                          
[5] LC_TIME=English_United States.utf8    

time zone: Europe/Paris
tzcode source: internal

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_4.6.1 sess_3.0.0    
[1] ‘3.0.0’
[1] "C:/Users/Akira/AppData/Local/R/win-library/4.6/sess"
[1] "C:/Users/Akira/AppData/Local/R/win-library/4.6" "C:/Program Files/R/R-4.6.1/library"            
JGD_SOCKET                                        npipe:////./pipe/jgd-04d758d0918964ab
SESS_DISCOVERY_FILE                               c:\Users\Akira\AppData\Roaming\Code\User\globalStorage\reditorsupport.r\sessions\fd1f53a255694fe950e22098cf1fc185.json
SESS_PLOT_BACKEND                                 auto
SESS_RSTUDIOAPI                                   TRUE
[1] TRUE
{"version":1,"endpoint":"\\\\.\\pipe\\vscode-r-7405fda80815652a","jgdSocket":"npipe:////./pipe/jgd-04d758d0918964ab","terminalPid":24284}
[1] TRUE
Warning message:
In sess::connect() :
  [sess] Connection info not available. Cannot connect to VS Code.
Warning message:
In sess::connect() :
  [sess] Connection info not available. Cannot connect to VS Code.

Two qq:

Did you test against the RC (dev) version of the extension previously? There's a potential sess version mismatch that might be triggering this issue. Regardless, can you try installing sess from R-universe to see if that fixes the issue? See https://github.com/REditorSupport/vscode-R/tree/main/sess#installation
Can you share your R-specific VS Code user settings?

Two qq:

Did you test against the RC (dev) version of the extension previously? There's a potential sess version mismatch that might be triggering this issue. Regardless, can you try installing sess from R-universe to see if that fixes the issue? See https://github.com/REditorSupport/vscode-R/tree/main/sess#installation

Can you share your R-specific VS Code user settings?

Thank you very much for your help. Installing sess from R-universe solves the problem for me

@randy3k

Excellent, thanks for confirming!

@randy3k maybe we should release a fake v3.0.1 patch version for both vscode-R and sess to head this off?

@grantmcdermott

@grantmcdermott should I open a separate issue or discussion on my earlier comment regarding how I was able to break sess on MacOS? #1794 (comment)

@grcatlin

@grcatlin If the r-universe install didn't fix it, then yes please open it as a separate issue.

feat: match bundled sess package by source snapshot (#1819)

Navigation Menu

Repository navigation

Canonical data viewer and plot integration still open in external R windows with vscode-R 3.0.0 #1794

Environment

Problem

Steps to reproduce

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Type

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

Canonical data viewer and plot integration still open in external R windows with vscode-R 3.0.0 #1794

Description

Environment

Problem

Steps to reproduce

Activity

grcatlin commented on Sep 28, 2026

leanhdung1994 commented on Sep 28, 2026

leanhdung1994 commented on Sep 28, 2026

grantmcdermott commented on Sep 28, 2026

leanhdung1994 commented on Sep 28, 2026

grantmcdermott commented on Sep 28, 2026

grcatlin commented on Sep 28, 2026

grantmcdermott commented on Sep 28, 2026

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Type

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

Issue actions