Performance and Usability Upgrades for SpeedGrader | Feature Overview

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Release Timing: Generally Available on January 17 as Feature Option. Upcoming enforcement is planned for July 18, 2026.
Regional Availability: Globally Supported
Customer Type: All customers
Available with: Canvas

Key Takeaway: Performance and usability upgrades for SpeedGrader allows for a faster and more efficient grading experience, reducing SpeedGrader load times and improving the grading experience.

Optimized for Large Courses: Engineered to handle higher enrollment volumes with ease, ensuring consistent performance and faster load times no matter the course size.
Minimal Learning Curve: Proven to maintain the familiar SpeedGrader interface educators trust, minimizing the need for retraining or change management.
Built for the Future: Upgraded backend architecture lays the foundation for ongoing enhancements in usability and performance, enabling faster innovation and iteration over time.

Administrative Highlights:

Enablement – “Performance and usability upgrades for Speedgrader” feature option
Default Status
- January 17 - July 18, 2026 - on by default
- After July 18, 2026 - Performance and usability upgrades for SpeedGrader becomes the default experience and will no longer be optional.
Configuration Availability – root account, sub account, and/or course level

Resources:

Release Notes - January 17, 2026

Instructure Enforcements, Deprecations, and Breaking Changes

Change Logs

Product Blog Post

User Guide: How do I use SpeedGrader with the New Performance and Usability Upgrades?

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Comments

JosephMurphy19333545

It looks great, but Canvas Betterizer stopped working with the new update, and now there is no way to move to the next student in Speedgrader by hitting enter. This puts us back 5 or 6 years when everyone was upset about a million clicks needed for everything. Please give us this functionality! I'd rather have efficiency over whether things look nice. Please give us this back—you've added so much time to my grading!

dbrace

Hello @JosephMurphy19333545,

The Canvas Betterizer (a Google Chrome extension located at https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/canvas-betterizer/pndigbfohhechaafblmjdicbbahgigfg in the Chrome Web Store) is a third-party extension that Instructure does not manage or support.

According to the extension's web store webpage, the extension has not been updated by the developer since the end of August 2024.

The developer's webpage is located at https://robertnoorda.com and the specific webpage for the extension is https://robertnoorda.com/portfolio/canvas-betterizer/ .

-Doug

mbourn

We had multiple users attempting to access speedgrader and were unable to do so. Acted like it was loading but never went past the spinning circle. Being that this was enabled a few days ago, we have disabled it and testing so far has resolved the issue. Our end-user with the issue tested speedgrader on her end and was successful as well. Are there other users experiencing the same issues? If so, we will hold off on enabling this feature until there is a fix issued.

Anna Lindsay

Hi @mbourn - I'm sorry to hear that you experienced issues! That behavior is not expected and would suggest reporting this issue to Canvas Support when you have a moment. That will be the best course of action to see what may have happened in this situation.

m5ski

I like a lot of the redesign, and the fact that images/documents aren't reloading when I put a grade into SpeedGrader. I do have one issue when comparing the performance enhancements to the old SpeedGrader, in that when I'm grading assignments, the scroll bar doesn't take me to the student I'm currently on like it does in regular SG, but rather takes me back to the top of the list, meaning that I have to scroll back down to find where I was. I've missed a few assignments that way because the "to be graded" circle seems smaller than before, and I'm sort of losing track of those circles in the checkmarks. Is there a timeline for when that may be implemented in the new UI?

YasiAfsharnive

Thanks @m5ski, this is a great call out. I'll work with the team to try to get the new drop down experience aligned with the old SpeedGrader. Stay tuned for an update!

johnod120

I'm noticing an issue with the new UI and New Quizzes: if a student has more than one attempt, I am unable to view any of the older attempts. There is a drop-down menu that shows the previous submissions and score, it lets me select it and there is a little message that says this is not the most recent submission, but the quiz results shown in the left-side of the screen don't change, they remain showing the most recent attempt results.

If I go into the Options area and revert to the old UI it works as expected.

Anna Lindsay

Hi there - can you please share this experience with Canvas support? Thank you!

PaulNagami

Quickly switching between students using the keyboard shortcuts appears to have gotten laggier. Before, I could easily take a stack of papers, shuffle them, and use J and K to get between students and leave comments. There is now a noticeable lag when switching quickly between students.

To make matters worse, the new rubric area is even larger than the old one, requiring me to dramatically stretch out that viewport to see the scores. This was a problem before, but now it's even worse.

Turning off the "usability improvements" from the Settings page GREATLY speeds up grading.

(To anticipate a suggestion: no, using the built-in randomization is not workable because these are on-paper submissions that I grade using a Canvas rubric; I would need to randomize in Canvas, then carefully sort the stack of papers to match the Speedgrader order, so that is a no-go. Likewise, going to the Grades Page, clicking on each student's assignment, and clicking the Speedgrader link is sluggish and cumbersome.)

embleton

we have seen this too - I think there is some slowness or caching issues. We found refreshing after a bit of a wait can make it appear!

YasiAfsharnive

Thanks for sharing this. We'll take a look at the keyboard shortcuts. We also understand the traditional view of rubrics requires a lot of scrolling - this is something we're actively working on. In the mean time, have you tried out horizontal/vertical rubric views (can be selected from the drop down menu above rubrics)?

johnod120

I just tried it again to make sure I had an example to give to support, but now it seems to be behaving as expected…

PatriciaRoy

We have two main complaints from faculty:

The gradebook icon in Speedgrader now opens in a new tab. Now, instructors have to find the correct tab to return to the Speedgrader instead of just hitting the back button from the gradebook.
The scroll bar issue as described above

We have one program that has opted out of the upgrade because of these issues and because they don't like that the rubric displays open by default.

m5ski

Also, when I'm grading assignments where students have submitted more than 1 file, the new Speedgrader is sort of randomly choosing which image to display first, and I can't usually tell based on the name of the file (they're mainly images with numeric names). Would it be possible to place a dot next to whichever file is open in Speedgrader if there is more than one file?