Unable to Hide the Grade Detail Tray in Canvas Teacher App for iPad Pro 12.9”

[Dan20]

I am unable to hide the grade/comment detail tray on my iPad Pro 12.9” like I am able to hide it on my laptop. On the smaller iPad, it at least disappears when the iPad is in portrait mode, but on the larger iPad, it never goes away. While grading a paper, this column is a waste of space, and because it limits the size of the student’s paper, the grader has constantly zoom in and out when writing comments.

Could the Canvas team make it possible/optional to hide this column like they do on the web-based version?

[Dan20]

It appears this conversation has occurred elsewhere, but it keeps being ignored and archived. Why? This seems like it would be a simple fix. I don't understand why Canvas won't allow us to toggle the tray on and off on the iPad. To write legibly using the Apple Pencil, the more real estate a grader has, the better the user experience.

[greydon]

Hello @Dan20 

Thank you for contacting the Instructure Community. We're sorry to hear you've been experiencing issues with grading on your tablet. I don't have a tablet to test this on but just a couple suggestions - It works on your regular tablet but not your large iPad pro? Canvas uses  responsive  design or the way the layout and features and buttons appear and interact across screens. Normally this means there is a certain display for browsers, tablets, and then phones based on pixels on the screen. There tends to be a certain threshold where the responsive design kicks in and changes the display to what you "should be" using. It's possible  the extra large tablets on  full  screen  are closer to  browsers than regular tablet design and thus it looks and  functions a little differently. That is my guess. Either way, this would be a bit more difficult to resolve than clearing cache or trying other browsers or apps etc. If you can provide screenshots I'd try posting this to the Ideas forum.

Feel free to check out the Ideas and Themes forum as Canvas implements great ideas such as this that they find within the community. 

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Ideas-and-Themes/ct-p/canvas-ideas-themes?tab=identified 

[Dan20]

Here is a screenshot of what I'm talking about. When the iPad Pro 12.9" is in portrait mode, the essay looks exactly as it would in size on an 8 1/2 X 11 sheet of paper. One of the reasons I purchased the Pro was so that I could grade essays in Canvas more easily without having to zoom in and out constantly. 

As you can see, however, when the iPad is oriented in portrait mode, over half of the screen is useless. I can switch to landscape mode, but even then I'd prefer to toggle off the sidebar because it provides nothing of use while grading. When you're trying to leave neat, legible comments, the greater access to the students' paper itself is preferable, especially since Canvas saves the hand-written comments in poor resolution.

[RMBuck]

I have been posting about this very issue since 2021. Is there hope for a solution on the horizon?