Can I switch to student view if I am not on the Home page for my course?

[linda_wills]

I would like to navigate down to a File/Quiz and then switch to the student view without leaving the context I navigated to by going all the way back to the home page.

[kona · Accepted solution]

 @linda_wills , greetings! No, right now there is no way to do this in Canvas. I did a quick search in the Ideas‌ area of the Community and didn't see anything for this. If you would like to suggest this as a new feature in Canvas you could do this by creating a new feature idea in the Idea area. 

Hope this helps! Kona

[linda_wills]

Thanks, Kona!

[James]

 @linda_wills 

Technically, you don't have to go all the way back to the homepage, you can also invoke the student view from the Settings page. That's where it was originally, and for a long time, but then Canvas added it to the homepage.

If you're willing to install some code, you can add this functionality. If you're a Canvas Admin, you can install it to so that everyone can use it or if you're an instructor, you can install a user script in your browser so that only you can use it. It's code the Mark Garcia wrote and Christopher Esbrandt updated. Check out Christopher's post from June 24, 2019, in Universal Student View Button for Teachers. 

Note:If you're installing it just for yourself, I would suggest Tampermonkey and not Greasemonkey -- I've written a bunch of scripts and Greasemonkey broke several of them when they rewrote the software for Firefox 57. Some continue to work but others do not -- Tampermonkey is working like a charm and supports more than just Firefox.