R Shiny and Dashboards

r
shiny
Books, tools, and examples for building interactive apps and dashboards with Shiny and htmlwidgets.
Published

31 October 2026

This guide collects books, tools, and examples for building interactive apps and dashboards in R with Shiny. Begin with the three picks under Start here, then use the tools section for layout, input, and widget packages. Installation and online options for running R are on the R page.

Start here

  • Shiny — Official Shiny site; Shiny builds interactive web apps from R and Python.
  • Mastering Shiny — Free online book on building Shiny apps.
  • Shiny, R in Practice — Chapter on Shiny from the R in Practice online book.

Tools and examples

  • ShinyUiEditor — Drag-and-drop interface for building Shiny apps.
  • gridlayout — Package for laying out Shiny apps and other R-derived HTML documents with CSS grid.
  • colourpicker — Colour picker for Shiny apps and for selecting colours in plots.
  • rhandsontable — R interface for spreadsheet-style tables in Shiny apps and documents.
  • htmlwidgets for R — Framework for bringing JavaScript visualizations into R.
  • Flexdashboard shiny ggplot2 diamonds — Example flexdashboard that combines Shiny and ggplot2 using the diamonds data.