Charlotte Wickham
Deep Dives

Create a Quarto Document in Positron

2025-10-01
Positron + Quarto graphic next to a VS Code window showing a Quarto document with a scatter plot.

Watch our tutorial to walk through the complete process of creating a new Quarto document in Positron, from setup through publishing.

Features highlighted in the video that make Positron a great environment for Quarto documents include:

 

Batteries included

 

Positron bundles the Quarto command-line interface and comes with the Quarto extension pre-installed, so you’ll be able to create and render Quarto documents out of the box. You can check your version of Quarto in the Status Bar.

If you have executable code cells in your document, you will need an additional package. Quarto will require the jupyter Python package for documents with Python code cells, and the R rmarkdown R package for documents with R code cells.

 

Buttons, commands and shortcuts

 

Positron helps you complete common Quarto tasks quickly with commands, buttons, and shortcuts. The most useful commands are:

  • Quarto: New Document: Create a new document, empty apart from some header boilerplate. Also available from the File > New File.. menu, or New File/Folder button.
  • Quarto: Preview: Render and open preview in the Viewer Pane. Also available from the Preview button in the Editor toolbar. Quarto: Preview format… is an alternative where you can select the format to preview.
  • Quarto: Insert Code Cell: Insert the backtick syntax that signifies an executable code cell. Also available in the Editor toolbar.
  • Quarto: Run…: Commands to send code from code cells to your Console. Also available from buttons above code cells.

 

Full code support in code cells

 

Code cells in Quarto documents receive the same comprehensive support as any other code file in Positron. As you write code, you’ll benefit from code completion, linting to catch syntax errors, and integrated documentation that appears on hover. Send your code to the Console to test snippets and explore results in the Variables and Plots panes.

 

YAML support for Quarto options

 

As you type in the document header or in code cell options, you’ll get suggestions for Quarto options and values. You’ll also get warnings about invalid YAML syntax or invalid options.

 

Integrated terminal when you need quarto commands

 

While Positron’s GUI handles the most common Quarto tasks, the integrated terminal provides access to the full quarto command-line interface when needed. For instance use quarto publish to deploy your documents to Quarto Pub, GitHub Pages, or other platforms.

 

Learning more

 

Ready to dive deeper? Here are essential resources for mastering Quarto in Positron:

Tags: positron quarto