Edit: After looking into the problem, I simplified this question.
This issue is that for all themes, except for hugo-lithium, changes to the site do not refresh in either the viewer pane or expanded window unless I restart the r studio session and serve the site. Using the verbose setting, the command window shows no content rendering after knitting. I believe the rendering happens on restart, but the command window closes out so I don't have that documentation. Restarting and serving takes a second so I am just considering using this workaround so I can use the themes I want.
R version 4.0.5 (2021-03-31)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 19042)
check_site()
― Running a series of automated checks for your blogdown website project...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
○ A successful check looks like this.
● [TODO] A check that needs your attention looks like this.
| Let's check out your blogdown site!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
― Checking config.yaml
| Checking "baseURL" setting for Hugo...
○ Found baseURL = ""; nothing to do here!
| Checking "ignoreFiles" setting for Hugo...
● [TODO] Add these items to the "ignoreFiles" setting: "\\.knit\\.md$", "\\.utf8\\.md$"
| Checking setting for Hugo's Markdown renderer...
○ All set! Found the "unsafe" setting for goldmark.
― Check complete: config.yaml
― Checking .gitignore
| Checking for items to remove...
○ Nothing to see here - found no items to remove.
| Checking for items to change...
○ Nothing to see here - found no items to change.
| Checking for items you can safely ignore...
● [TODO] You can safely add to .gitignore: .DS_Store, Thumbs.db
| Checking for items to ignore if you build the site on Netlify...
● [TODO] When Netlify builds your site, you can safely add to .gitignore: /public/, /resources/
| Checking for files required by blogdown but not committed...
● [TODO] Found 1 file that should be committed in GIT:
layouts/shortcodes/blogdown/postref.html
― Check complete: .gitignore
― Checking Hugo
| Checking Hugo version...
○ Found Hugo. You are using Hugo 0.81.0.
| Checking .Rprofile for Hugo version used by blogdown...
| Hugo version not set in .Rprofile.
● [TODO] Set options(blogdown.hugo.version = "0.81.0") in .Rprofile and restart R.
― Check complete: Hugo
― Checking netlify.toml...
○ Found HUGO_VERSION = 0.81.0 in [build] context of netlify.toml.
| Checking that Netlify & local Hugo versions match...
○ It's a match! Blogdown and Netlify are using the same Hugo version (0.81.0).
| Checking that Netlify & local Hugo publish directories match...
○ Good to go - blogdown and Netlify are using the same publish directory: public
― Check complete: netlify.toml
― Checking content files
| Checking for validity of YAML metadata in posts...
○ All YAML metadata appears to be syntactically valid.
| Checking for previewed content that will not be published...
● [TODO] Found 1 file with a future publish date:
content/event/example/index.md
If you want to publish today, change a file's YAML key to 'date: 2021-03-25'
● [TODO] Found 2 files marked as drafts. To un-draft, run the command:
blogdown::edit_draft(c(
"content/privacy.md",
"content/terms.md"
))
and change a file's YAML from 'draft: true' to 'draft: false' or delete it
| Checking your R Markdown content...
○ All R Markdown files have been knitted.
○ All R Markdown output files are up to date with their source files.
| Checking for .html/.md files to clean up...
○ Found 0 duplicate .html output files.
○ Found 0 incompatible .html files to clean up.
| Checking for the unnecessary 'content/' directory in theme...
○ Great! Your theme does not contain the content/ directory.
― Check complete: Content
Wow I finally can answer this! It turns out that having my working directory in a google drive was the issue. Since it worked for hugo-lithium, I didn't think of it. I don't know enough to say why hugo-lithuim works while others don't though. Hopefully this helps others who may come across the same issue.