A Review of **rmarkdown** Updates from 2024 to 2026

Back in 2022, I promised that R Markdown wouldn’t die. In this post, I’ll give a summary of notable updates in rmarkdown v2.26–v2.32 (2024–2026). For the full changelog, please see the release notes on GitHub.

rmarkdown 2.26 (2024-03-05)

Avoid corrupting input files

A subtle bug could cause rmarkdown to silently overwrite the input .Rmd file if certain conditions were met during rendering. This has been fixed (#2534).

fig_crop: auto aligned with knitr

The output format option fig_crop: auto now uses the same logic as knitr to decide whether PDF figure cropping is possible (checking for the pdfcrop tool). Previously rmarkdown had its own, slightly different check that could give inconsistent results (yihui/knitr#2246).

Removed stringr dependency

stringr was used in only one place and the equivalent base R code is simple, so it was removed. One fewer transitive dependency for all rmarkdown users (#2530).

rmarkdown 2.27 (2024-05-20)

Configurable auxiliary-files suffix

By default, rmarkdown writes HTML dependencies into a _files/ directory. On Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive this suffix can sometimes cause the folder to be randomly deleted. You can now configure a different suffix in your .Rprofile, e.g.,

options(rmarkdown.files.suffix = "_rmdfiles")

and the directory will be _rmdfiles/ instead (#2550).

Image path regression fixed

A regression in 2.26 broke absolute image paths when output_dir is set. Absolute paths pointing inside the output directory are now correctly made relative to output_dir again.

rmarkdown 2.28 (2024-08-17)

beamer_presentation supports LaTeX dependencies

You can now declare LaTeX dependencies for Beamer slides either via the new extra_dependencies argument or from within a chunk, e.g.,

---
output:
  beamer_presentation:
    extra_dependencies: ["booktabs", "longtable"]
---

or inline:

knitr::asis_output("", meta = list(
  rmarkdown::latex_dependency("longtable")
))

This makes it easier to include packages like longtable or booktabs without patching the LaTeX template (#2478).

Table row classes for Pandoc ≥ 3.2.1

Pandoc 3.2.1 changed how it names table row classes, dropping odd, even, and header. rmarkdown now adds them back so existing CSS that styles table rows continues to work (#2567).

rmarkdown 2.29 (2024-11-04)

knit_params_ask() uses select for multi-value parameters

When a parameter declared in YAML allows multiple values, the interactive parameter dialog now shows a select (multi-choice) input instead of a radio button, e.g.,

params:
  primaries:
    choices: ["red", "yellow", "blue"]
    multiple: true

Previously a radio input was incorrectly used, making it impossible to select more than one value at a time. Single-value parameters with fewer than five choices still use radio by default (which is configurable) (#2576).

rmarkdown 2.30 (2025-09-29)

Pandoc compatibility updates

The deprecated --no-highlight Pandoc argument was replaced with --syntax-highlighting=none for Pandoc ≥ 3.8, and the long-obsolete |> / => syntax-highlighting workaround (unnecessary since Pandoc 2.18, over three years ago) was removed (#2602, #2290).

convert_ipynb() preserves raw cells without format

Raw notebook cells that have no format field in their metadata are no longer silently dropped during conversion. For example, a cell like

{
  "cell_type": "raw",
  "source": ["some raw content"]
}

was previously lost; it is now passed through to the output (#2587).

render() fixed for .md → PDF

A bug prevented render() from working when converting a plain .md file directly to PDF. Fixed (#2599).

pandoc_convert() errors when Pandoc is absent

Previously pandoc_convert() would fail silently or with a confusing message when Pandoc was not available. It now throws an informative error immediately, making the root cause obvious (#2600).

rmarkdown 2.31 (2026-03-26)

Base64 images work in non-HTML output

Previously, base64-encoded images only worked correctly in HTML output. They now work in non-HTML formats (such as PDF) as well (#2604).

rmarkdown 2.32 (2026-09-07)

LaTeX auxiliary files written to output directory

When rendering to PDF, LaTeX auxiliary files (.aux, .log, etc.) are now written to output_dir rather than the input file’s directory. Previously latexmk() ran in the input directory, so rendering failed when that directory was read-only—common in production deployments or when the document lives in a shared read-only location, e.g.,

rmarkdown::render("report.Rmd", output_dir = "docs/")
# Now works even if the directory containing report.Rmd is read-only

(#1975, #1615)

intermediates_dir PDF rendering fixed

Two related bugs with the intermediates_dir argument were fixed:

1. A cannot open file '.tex' error when Pandoc wrote the intermediate .tex into intermediates_dir but rmarkdown looked for it in the input directory. The .tex is now resolved to its actual location.
2. With keep_tex: true, the retained .tex is now moved next to the output instead of being left behind in intermediates_dir (#2183).

lib_dir outside the output directory

HTML output no longer errors when lib_dir points outside output_dir, e.g.,

rmarkdown::render("a/report.Rmd",
  output_dir = "a/",
  lib_dir     = "../shared-libs/")

Dependencies are now referenced with an up-tree relative path instead of failing with "The path does not appear to be a descendant of

". This lets documents in sibling subdirectories share a single library directory (#146, #1859, #2199).

Minimum Pandoc version raised to 2.8

Support for Pandoc 1.x and early 2.x was dropped, removing several internal version guards. Pandoc 2.8 was released in 2019, so this should affect very few users in practice (#2623).

Relicensed to MIT

rmarkdown is now licensed under MIT (previously GPL-3) (#2615).

Parallel render() via fork clusters fixed

When calling render() in parallel via parallel::mclapply() or a fork cluster, processes could accidentally delete each other’s temp files because all processes shared the same tempdir(). Temp files are now tracked per process, so sibling renders no longer interfere (#1632).

ioslides captions fixed for Pandoc 3

Captioned figures disappeared from ioslides_presentation() output when using Pandoc 3, which represents standalone captioned images as Figure elements not handled by the custom writer. rmarkdown now handles them correctly (#2607).

Acknowledgements

I want to thank all contributors who filed issues or submitted pull requests for these releases: André Veríssimo (@averissimo), @atusy, Sebastian Meyer (@bastistician), Michal Burda (@beerda), @BerndGit, Brian Perdomo (@brianperdomo), @certara-tzweers, Christophe Dervieux (@cderv), Etienne Bacher (@etiennebacher), Gábor Csárdi (@gaborcsardi), Jiri Novotny (@gorgitko), Jonathan Guerra (@jonathan-g), @jsinnett, @jszhao, Jiří Moravec (@J-Moravec), Karan (@karangattu), @katrinabrock, Leonidas Zhak (@LeonidasZhak), Miriam Rainers (@mrainers), Rémi Thériault (@rempsyc), Siddhartha Bagaria (@siddharthab), Tomasz Kalinowski (@t-kalinowski), @therealgenna, Ruiyang Wu (@ywwry66).

In particular, I want to highlight Jonathan Guerra for his perseverance on the PR #2199 for five whole years. “Who speaks of victory? To endure (70+ times of git merge) is all.” Finally, I have had the time and courage to look at his PR and fix the problem (apologies for the delay!), which has removed an unreasonable requirement in rmarkdown’s lib_dir argument, and the original request goes all the way back to 2014 with many upvotes on related issues! I’m really glad that this problem is gone at last. Similarly, there have been some other long-lasting annoying bugs like #1975 and #1632, which were also upvoted by many users and are now gone.

If you still use R Markdown (cool as a cucumber), I hope you will enjoy the new releases. As usual, please feel free to file issues or send pull requests on GitHub if you need anything. Thanks!