The best way to see Canvas due dates on your phone is to subscribe the phone's own calendar to your Canvas calendar feed. It takes five minutes, needs no new app, and puts every deadline next to the rest of your week, on the lock screen and in whatever widget you already use. Keep the Canvas Student app as well, for grades, announcements and messages, which a calendar never carries.
The reason is simple. 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. An app you have to remember to open is the failure mode that makes people miss deadlines in the first place.
How do I put the Canvas feed on my phone's calendar?
Canvas publishes your calendar as a feed: one long link that any calendar app can subscribe to and keep up to date. No account anywhere new, and your assignments land in the same place as everything else.
On iPhone
- In Canvas, in your phone's browser, open Calendar, then Calendar Feed, and copy the link.
- Open the Calendar app and tap Calendars at the bottom.
- Tap Add Calendar, then Add Subscription Calendar.
- Paste the link, tap Find, and save. Give it a name you will recognise later.
On Android
Google Calendar's Android app cannot add a subscription. Add it once from Google Calendar on the web, on any computer, and it appears in the phone app afterwards. The exact steps, and what does and does not stay in sync, are in how to add Canvas to Google Calendar.
What you get: assignments, quizzes, graded discussions and any class meetings your instructor put on the Canvas calendar, from the past 30 days to a year ahead.
What you do not get: Canvas To Do items, announcements, grades, Inbox messages, files, and anything the instructor did not give a due date to. A feed carries calendar-shaped things only.
One habit matters: treat that link like a password. It is tied to your Canvas account, and anyone who has it can read your schedule.
If you would like study time on that same calendar as well as deadlines, Scholarwire for Canvas plans study blocks from your Canvas courses and can publish them as a feed your phone subscribes to the same way. You can start free on the phone; connecting Canvas needs the Chrome extension on a computer.
Is the Canvas Student app enough on its own?
Worth installing even if you use the feed, because it 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 shares the Canvas calendar's biggest quirk: 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.
Does Canvas work in a phone browser?
It does, and it is not pleasant. It is still 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 in a phone browser twice.
Which Canvas notifications should I turn on?
On a computer, open Account, then Notifications, and set what reaches you and how often. You can have due date changes and new announcements arrive by email right away, while grading updates come as a daily summary, so the important things interrupt you and the rest does not.
This is worth ten minutes once per degree. Left on the defaults, the messages are noisy enough that many students mute all of them, which is how a moved exam date ends up unread.
Can a Chrome extension help on a phone?
Only from a computer. Chrome on a phone does not run extensions at all, and that is a platform decision rather than a gap any extension can close.
In practice it matters less than it sounds. The setup happens once, on a computer. What you carry afterwards is the output: a calendar subscription, a web page you can open anywhere, or a notification.
That is how Scholarwire works. You connect Canvas once on a computer with Chrome. After that, the calendar feed goes on your phone like any other subscription, and the web app opens in a phone browser, with your study plan, decks and notes on Pro and the trial. On Free, sync pauses, so a phone starts empty. Only the Canvas connection needs the computer.
What should I set up first?
If you want one recommendation rather than five options:
- 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.
- Install the Canvas Student app and let it do notifications. Announcements and grades, not deadlines.
- Spend ten minutes on the Canvas notification settings so the messages that matter reach you and the rest do not.
- 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 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 step above moves the information to a screen you look at anyway.