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Canvas on your phone, every way to see due dates without the app

The Canvas Student app is not the only way to carry your deadlines. What the app does well, what a calendar subscription does better, and how to get due dates onto the screen you look at.

Key facts · checked September 16, 2026

  • A Canvas calendar feed is a normal .ics subscription, so any phone calendar app can read it, including the one already on your home screen, with no extra app installed.
  • The subscription is added once on a computer or in the phone's calendar settings, and from then on it updates itself, roughly once a day, on the calendar app's own schedule.
  • The feed link is a credential. Anyone holding it can read your course schedule, so it should never be posted publicly or pasted into a shared document.
  • Browser extensions do not run on phone browsers, so anything that reads Canvas through an extension is set up once on a computer and then read on the phone.
  • A phone's built-in calendar can put deadlines on a lock screen, a widget and a watch face, which is the real advantage over any app you have to remember to open.

The Canvas Student app exists and it works. It is also an app you have to remember to open, which is the exact failure mode that makes people miss deadlines in the first place. The deadline you notice is the one that appears next to your dentist appointment, on the calendar you look at ten times a day without deciding to.

Every practical way to get Canvas due dates onto a phone, what each one is good at, and which one is worth the five minutes.

Option 1: subscribe your phone's calendar to the Canvas feed

This is the best version for most people, and it is the one almost nobody is told about.

Canvas publishes your calendar as a feed, a single long link ending in .ics. Any calendar app can subscribe to that link and keep itself updated. No extra app, no account anywhere new, and your assignments end up in the same place as everything else in your life.

On iPhone, without a computer:

  1. In Canvas on your phone's browser, open Calendar, then Calendar Feed, and copy the link.
  2. Open Settings, then Apps, then Calendar, then Accounts, then Add Account, then Other, then Add Subscribed Calendar. On older versions of iOS the path is Settings, Calendar, Accounts, Add Account, Other.
  3. Paste the link and save. Give it a name you will recognise later.

On Android: Google Calendar's Android app cannot add a subscription itself. Add it once from Google Calendar on the web, on any computer, and it appears in the phone app automatically afterwards. The exact steps, and what does and does not stay in sync, are in Canvas to Google Calendar, step by step.

What you get: assignments, quizzes, graded discussions and any class meetings your instructor put on the calendar, showing up beside the rest of your week, on your lock screen and in whatever calendar widget you already use.

What you do not get: announcements, grades, Inbox messages, files, and anything the instructor did not give a due date to. A feed carries calendar-shaped things only.

One important habit: treat that link like a password. It is tied to your Canvas account and anyone who has it can read your schedule.

Option 2: the Canvas Student app

Worth installing even if you use the feed, because it is the only option here that covers the things a calendar cannot.

It is good at: grades as they are posted, announcements, Inbox messages, submitting a file from your phone, and push notifications for those. If your instructor communicates through Canvas announcements, the app is how you find out promptly.

It is weaker at: being a calendar. Its list of upcoming work is fine, and it is still a separate place you have to go and check. It also inherits every quirk of the Canvas calendar itself, including the big one: work with no due date does not appear. If something is missing on the phone and present in the course, the causes are the same ones in Canvas Calendar not showing assignments, what to check.

Sensible setup: the app for notifications and grades, the calendar subscription for deadlines.

Option 3: Canvas in a phone browser

Canvas's web interface works on a phone. It is not pleasant, and it is the fastest route to something the app sometimes buries, such as a course Syllabus page or an assignment's full instructions with an attachment.

Keep it as the fallback rather than the plan. Nobody reads their week on a phone browser twice.

Option 4: notifications instead of checking

The most underused setting in Canvas. On a computer, open Account, then Notifications, and set what reaches you and how often. You can have due date changes and new announcements go to email immediately, while grading updates go as a daily summary, so the important things interrupt you and the rest does not.

This is worth ten minutes once per degree. The default settings are noisy enough that most people mute the whole thing, which is how a moved exam date ends up unread.

Option 5: read Canvas on a computer, carry the result on your phone

Anything that reads Canvas through a browser extension, including this product, works this way, because browser extensions do not run on phone browsers. Chrome, Edge, Brave and Arc on a phone do not load extensions at all, and that is a platform decision rather than a gap any of these tools can close.

In practice it matters less than it sounds. The setup is a one time thing on a computer. What you carry afterwards is the output: a calendar subscription, a web page you can open anywhere, or a notification.

With Scholarwire specifically: you connect Canvas once on a computer with Chrome, and after that your semester is a calendar feed you subscribe to on the phone like any other, plus a web app that works in a phone browser. The study plan, the flashcards and the notes are all readable from the phone. Only the initial Canvas connection needs the computer. You can start free on the phone and connect Canvas later when you are at a laptop.

What to do

If you want one recommendation rather than five options:

  1. Subscribe your phone's calendar to the Canvas feed. Five minutes, once. This is the step that changes behaviour, because it puts deadlines where you already look instead of where you have to remember to look.
  2. Install the Canvas Student app and let it do notifications. Announcements and grades, not deadlines.
  3. Spend ten minutes on the Canvas notification settings so the messages that matter reach you and the rest do not.
  4. Check the course pages once a week on a real screen. The feed cannot show work with no due date, and that is the work that gets missed.

The failure this all guards against is not forgetting a deadline you knew about. It is never having seen it, because it was in a place you did not open. Every option above is a way of moving the information to a screen you look at anyway.

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Scholarwire does this for you. Connect Canvas once and your semester arrives as a calendar, a study plan, notes, flashcards and quizzes, with 14 days of Pro and no card.

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