Video Notes

When I’m recording a video tutorial using RStudio, I sometimes make mistakes in the console and need to clear previous output for editing purposes.

The only option for clearing the console in RStudio is to clear the entire console (either via the broom icon or the command cat("\014")), which is not helpful in this particular situation.

As a workaround, I open the web inspector for the RStudio console and execute JavaScript code to do the clearing.

Setup

To open the web inspector, right click the RStudio Console pane and select Inspect Element. In the pane that appears go to the Console tab and execute the following JavaScript code:

function clear(n = 1) {
    let container = document.getElementById("rstudio_console_output");
    if (container) {
        let spans = container.getElementsByTagName("span");
        for (let i = 0; i < n && spans.length > 0; i++) {
            spans[spans.length - 1].remove(); // Remove last span n times
        }
    }
}

This defines a function called clear that accepts an argument n indicating the number of lines to clear. If n is omitted, it will clear 1 line by default.

Once this function is defined, I can invoke it whenever I need to clear lines.

Misc. Notes:

• To make the web inspector appear in its own window, click the three dots on the right and choose the first option under the Dock side options. I typically leave the inspector open in a separate monitor when recording so I can execute my clear command as needed.
• The clear function does need to be manually loaded every time a new RStudio window is opened.
• The above JavaScript code could fail if RStudio updates its DOM. If that happens, I will update the JavaScript accordingly.
• If anyone knows of a smoother way to do this, let me know (mail@codewithsusan.com). I took a look at the RStudio API but didn’t see any features that could accomplish something similar.