My question is similar to a question previously posted but never really answered here:
Disable GUI, graphics devices in R
I do not like the R tcltk popups for CRAN mirror selection. They also pop up to choose a package when searching for help on a function in two packages.
Is there any way to disable these windows without disabling X11 completely? I still want plot() commands to work as normal, but disable the little select menus that take forever to load over a remote connection.
For example, if you use ssh, but don't use -X, then the mirror select is just text within R, you type a number. It's fast. This is what I want, but maintaining X11 for plots b.
Anyone know how to maintain graphics windows but disable the "choice" tcltk windows?
Dirk provides ways to avoid the menus altogether, but to answer your question as posed, I think you want
options(menu.graphics=FALSE)
I tracked this option down by finding the class of objects returned from help (it's help_files_with_topic), scanning utils:::print.help_files_with_topic and finding the line
menu(txt, title = gettext("Choose one"), graphics = getOption("menu.graphics"))