diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 8e1b6839ca..3b09fa405f 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Package: rmarkdown
 Type: Package
 Title: Dynamic Documents for R
-Version: 2.6.4
+Version: 2.6.5
 Authors@R: c(
   person("JJ", "Allaire", role = "aut", email = "jj@rstudio.com"),
   person("Yihui", "Xie", role = c("aut", "cre"), email = "xie@yihui.name", comment = c(ORCID = "0000-0003-0645-5666")),
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 827ef6beda..a62939d193 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -9,6 +9,9 @@ rmarkdown 2.7
 
 - Automatically exclude renv directory for `render_site()` (thanks, @jmbuhr, #1996)
 
+- Do not force `options(htmltools.preserve.raw = TRUE)` when this option has been set, otherwise it is impossible for other packages to turn this option off, e.g., yihui/xaringan#293.
+
+
 rmarkdown 2.6
 ================================================================================
 
@@ -48,6 +51,7 @@ rmarkdown 2.6
   
 - Fix Fontawesome 5 icons in navbar by correctly handling new prefix as `fa` has been deprecated in favor of `fas` or `fab` (#1967)
 
+
 rmarkdown 2.5
 ================================================================================
 
diff --git a/R/render.R b/R/render.R
index e7a123915a..d3645b4f90 100644
--- a/R/render.R
+++ b/R/render.R
@@ -585,14 +585,13 @@ render <- function(input,
     templates <- knitr::opts_template$get()
     on.exit(knitr::opts_template$restore(templates), add = TRUE)
 
-    # specify that htmltools::htmlPreserve should use the pandoc raw
-    # attribute (e.g. ```{=html}) rather than preservation tokens when
-    # pandoc >= v2.0. Note that this option will have the intended effect
-    # only for versions of htmltools >= 0.5.1.
+    # specify that htmltools::htmlPreserve() should use the Pandoc raw attribute
+    # by default (e.g. ```{=html}) rather than preservation tokens when pandoc
+    # >= v2.0. Note that this option will have the intended effect only for
+    # versions of htmltools >= 0.5.1.
     if (pandoc2.0() && packageVersion("htmltools") >= "0.5.1") {
-      prev <- getOption("htmltools.preserve.raw", default = NA)
-      options(htmltools.preserve.raw = TRUE)
-      if (!is.na(prev)) {
+      if (is.null(prev <- getOption("htmltools.preserve.raw"))) {
+        options(htmltools.preserve.raw = TRUE)
         on.exit(options(htmltools.preserve.raw = prev), add = TRUE)
       }
     }