I'm struggling with how to to handle audio file embeds and would love to advice from the Community. My use case is I my students make their own audio recordings and I want to embed those within the RCE. These are .mp3 files and I don't want to use anything other than Canvas, Studio, or Google Drive. The problem with audio-only files in Studio and the RCE media player is how much vertical space they take (screenshot embedded): * Audio file 1 is a link to a file in Google Drive can be linked, but that opens in a new browser window * Audio file 2 uses the RCE's media player. That's embedded (good) but the height of the player takes up too much space. * This is even worse with Canvas Studio, which I used for Audio file 3. I could add a thumbnail but that won't fix the space that's taken up when the file is playing. With the two embedded options, changing the height of the player does not fix the issue because it hides the controls. The best embed option I could find so far is to embed the Google Drive audio file, using some code I found via searching online (I replaced file-ID with the file identifier from Google Drive): I like how short this is (only 30 pixels in this embedded screenshot for Audio file 4), though the button to view in a new tab is partially hidden. Instructure has not yet developed a streamlined audio player per a February 27, 2025 Product Blog announcement. Pending that development, how are you providing access to audio files in Canvas?

How do you handle audio file embeds?

I'm struggling with how to to handle audio file embeds and would love to advice from the Community. My use case is I my students make their own audio recordings and I want to embed those within the RCE. These are .mp3 files and I don't want to use anything other than Canvas, Studio, or Google Drive.

The problem with audio-only files in Studio and the RCE media player is how much vertical space they take (screenshot embedded):

Audio file 1 is a link to a file in Google Drive can be linked, but that opens in a new browser window
Audio file 2 uses the RCE's media player. That's embedded (good) but the height of the player takes up too much space.
This is even worse with Canvas Studio, which I used for Audio file 3. I could add a thumbnail but that won't fix the space that's taken up when the file is playing.

With the two embedded options, changing the height of the player does not fix the issue because it hides the controls.

The best embed option I could find so far is to embed the Google Drive audio file, using some code I found via searching online (I replaced file-ID with the file identifier from Google Drive):

<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/file-ID/preview" width="400" height="30" loading="lazy"></iframe>

Screenshot of embedded Google Drive media player

I like how short this is (only 30 pixels in this embedded screenshot for Audio file 4), though the button to view in a new tab is partially hidden.

Instructure has not yet developed a streamlined audio player per a February 27, 2025 Product Blog announcement. Pending that development, how are you providing access to audio files in Canvas?

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dbrace

Hi @Greg,

Since you are trying to use a small amount of vertical space, I'm not sure how else to do it other than what you have already tried.

@Akos Farago do you have any tips? Do you have a status update for a Canvas Studio audio player?

-Doug

Chris

Hi @Greg,

I know I'm going a bit away form the options you have available to use, but this might be relevant for you or others who may find this thread too.

We faced a similar situation and discussion around video about a year and a half ago, as we were upgrading our Kaltura (similar to Canvas Studio) players to new versions. We elected to use the video player, again similar to your Canvas studio screenshot, for audio as well. It has the exact same "oversized" look with the ability to add a thumbnail. Kaltura does have a smaller dedicated audio player, but we elected not to use it at that time. You may ask why we made this decision…. For us, it really came down to accessibility. The small audio players like your 30px Google Drive one, don't have space to display captions, while the big video player does. Kaltura did add a "pop out" caption/transcript option to their audio player, but it had (and maybe still has) limitations we weren't comfortable with at the time.

Now with all of this said, we do let teachers choose form three different embed sizes, so they can go with a "small" 640x360 player for audio, vs our larger standard size for videos. I don't know if Canvas studio can do that and afford you to do an even smaller embed if you wanted (it's hard to figues out what size yours are from the screenshot), but maybe it is around 640px wide already.

-Chris

Akos Farago

@Chris we are fully aware of this challenge and we spent some time this year to validate a new audio-only layout as we were updating our media player across Canvas the first half of the year. While it was pushed out to next year, it is still on the radar and we are currently aiming end of H1 2026 with new audio layout.

karen_bowden

I needed to add an audio-only file to a course page recently and was confronted by the same dilemma. I made the size just small enough so the controls are still visible by changing the height in the html to 7 instead of 14.2. And I added a separate link below it to the Transcript because I do not have a way to create an SRT or WebVTT file for captions/subtitles. Plus, this method was faster because I already had the text file that I used to create the audio. (I used a combo of Google's vids.new and VLC.)

dbrace

Thanks for bringing accessibility into this, @Chris, even if it related to another vendor and their platform.

-Doug

dbrace

Thank you @Akos Farago. Looking forward to seeing the enhancements that Studio has next year and thank you addressing this challenge. We have a music course where the teacher has uploaded countless audio files (they are not using Studio - I wish they would - and the steps that they taken work but - at least in my opinion - they are not ideal and I probably could not duplicate the experience if I needed to) and I would like to help them standardize the steps so that I can better support them and their courses.

-Doug

Greg

Thanks @Chris for this response and mentioning accessibility. In my example the students are reading chapters from our textbook, so everyone already has access to the text that's being spoken. That certainly meets the intent of accessibility though might not meet the letter of the pending regulatory enforcement. I did some poking around and it doesn't look like captions can be added to an .mp3 file in Google Drive.

Jeff_F

@Greg while it is an additional step, it is possible to ask students to generate the public link and then paste that link into the discussion RCE, for example.

When the link is selected a player opens full screen and this includes access to the captions.

Try it here: https://erau.instructuremedia.com/embed/b8ff72ec-19d5-445b-ad52-b2889dbd94d7

Greg

Thanks Jeff. Nice music! 🇺🇲

I'm taking on the task of hosting and embedding the audio files, and my poor students will have to listen to my voice until they volunteer to read chapters on their own. 🤣

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