Enable learning no matter what

Our mission as the creator of the Canvas LMS is to elevate success in learning. This is a goal we always insist on and we believe that enabling a convenient offline learning possibility is a great step towards this goal. 

For Canvas and Apple customers in the United States, iWork files (.pages, .numbers, and .key) can be uploaded via Canvas apps on iOS or the web and they will now preview in Canvas’s DocViewer. This feature enhancement is live as of August 30, 2023. 

At Instructure, we are always looking for ways to improve our Canvas mobile apps and make it more user-friendly. That's why we're excited to share that we are working on a new feature - Offline Support in the Canvas Student app! This feature will allow you to use a set of functionality in the app even when you don't have an internet connection.

We have created a short survey to gather insights from you guys and understand what you think, what capabilities you want to see in our app. Your feedback is crucial in determining what we prioritize in our research and development pipeline.

We see that the ratio of the devices running iOS 14 is relatively low (2.3%) and decreasing, therefore we decided to introduce changes regarding the minimum supported iOS version. The highest app versions which run on devices with iOS 14 are the following:

• Canvas Teacher: 1.20.0
• Canvas Student: 6.20.0
• Canvas Parent: 3.6.0

I hope this post will make many of you happy. Well, more accurately not the post itself, but the feature which we are releasing for the Android and iOS Canvas applications. There were tons of incoming requests asking us to let the users decide between dark and light themes according to their needs.

The Canvas mobile applications just like any other application (even web pages in the web browser) store data on the local device for various reasons. Mostly for performance and speed benefits, but even distance learning considerations can play a role here like preparing the applications for offline usage. 

When you open the Canvas mobile apps, they keep you logged in, even if you put the app to the background or close it completely. This behavior adds convenience for the users and is typically what we expect from a mobile application in 2022. But many times convenience comes with sacrifice.

Course description text is cut off the home screen when dynamic text is enabled. (Impact on user: Users may not be able to see the text that describes the course where they are enrolled. This could be confusing for users with neurological or intellectual disabilities, especially when they are enrolled into multiple, similarly named courses. 

New user management tools allow for more control over individual account access for web and mobile.

This is the second part of my thoughts regarding student annotations in the mobile apps.

So, even if it is not obviously visible from the UI, the “traditional” annotations and the “Student Annotation Submission” annotations use different technological approaches under the hood and that should be considered/implemented in the Student App too. This takes time but you can count on us. We’ll have it released before the end of 2021.

Approximately 80 million people live with some type of disability in the European Union. That is already a huge number. These people would like to use the same tools and equipment that we all do. They matter, not only because 80 million people is a huge business potential, but because they have the right to benefit from the technology, too. And this example is only the European Union—every country in the world has people who live with disabilities.

It's quite important nowadays to be effective. That is true in Canvas Mobile apps too. The idea is to have a "start here" list of items that collects the most important, the most popular features to have them always at hand, so we save time by eliminating the always repeating navigation need. Let us know your thoughts!  

We have run a couple of user interviews recently. We wanted to know how the K-5 teachers utilize the technology and the possibilities of Canvas. I am acting as the product manager of the Canvas Mobile Apps, and not surprisingly I am mostly interested in the role and importance of mobile devices in educating these age groups. Well, the findings were more or less obvious.

Effective 1 March 2021, we will no longer enable http traffic for any authentication providers in all Canvas mobile apps. This update means we’ll only allow communication over https protocol.

Everything’s green and the driveway is covered in sidewalk chalk and life is totally normal, so that means it’s time for a mobile update!

Canvas Parent 3.1 beta for Android and iOS - incoming!

We’re at nine million monthly active users of the Canvas mobile apps, which is many millions more than when I last posted about Instructure’s approach to mobile. If you’re new to Canvas, or if you’re curious about how and why we do the things we do, this post is for you!

All about Canvas Parent 3.0 iOS Beta.

We’re waffling between snow and sunshine in Utah and my discolored pumpkins are shriveled and leaking, so that means it’s time for a fall update! Here’s what the mobile teams are working on.

Hope summer is going well for you! After the second-rainiest spring on record, the atmosphere over Utah burned away and now we're all walking around in climate-controlled space suits and eating sand. Here’s what the mobile teams are working on.

Here's some stuff that's worth writing home about!

It’s about time we published an update from the Canvas mobile teams, don’t you think?

If you're looking for printer-friendly how-to guides for parents who are self-registering for Canvas, here's what we've come up with.

Instructure's mobile strategy usually ends up outlined in a couple of InstructureCon presentations, but if you’re new to Canvas, or if you haven’t made it to InstructureCon, or if you just want to know more about our mobile strategy, here’s a brief summary.

With a few more tweaks we'll be done with Canvas Parent 2.0, so here's a final pre-release post! Anything to do with pairing codes or self-registration in this post is only relevant if self-registration is enabled at your institution.

[UPDATE] For the most recent post on Canvas Parent 2.0, check out Canvas Parent 2.0 - Pre-Release Update.

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We’re making some really good progress on Canvas Parent 2.0, so I wanted to post some screenshots/flows here to keep you all informed and answer some FAQs.

[UPDATE] For the most recent post on Canvas Parent 2.0, check out Canvas Parent 2.0 - Pre-Release Update.

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This here’s meant for the K-12ers in the house. HE folks are welcome to keep reading, but I bet you won’t find it very relevant.

Version 6.0 of the student app has been in the wild for a few weeks, and I wanted to give an update on what you can expect from the Canvas mobile apps over the next few months.