Child Item

New Canvas Login UI: Prepare for Legacy Login UI Deprecation on June 30, 2026

Summary

This is a reminder of an important update regarding the Canvas Login UI. To enhance security, accessibility, and user experience, we are deprecating the legacy Login UI and automatically migrating all institutions to the New Canvas Login UI who don’t opt-in ahead of the deprecation date.

This post covers the key dates, changes, and actions your institution needs to take to prepare for this transition.

Key Deprecation Date: June 30, 2026

As announced in July 2025, the existing Legacy Login UI will be officially deprecated on June 30, 2026.

Automated Migration: If your institution has not opted in to the New Login UI by this date, your Canvas instance will be automatically migrated on July 1, 2026.
Confidence: The New Login UI has been running in production since April 2025 and is considered stable and bug-free.

What’s New and What’s Changing?

The New Login UI is designed to be more secure and accessible, resulting in changes to available customization options. The primary differences relate to theming and custom branding.

1. Limited Theme Editor Customization

To ensure compliance with web accessibility standards, the New Login UI introduces stricter theming rules:

White Form Background: The login form is now enforced on a white background.
Reduced Color Options: Many previously available options for color customization have been removed.

Additionally, to align Canvas with Instructure's current branding guidelines, a non-customizable Canvas LMS Logo and top banner has been introduced on the Login and Registration UIs.

2. Improved Self Registration Experience

If your institution allows for self-user registration for all user types or just Parents/Observers, significant User Experience and accessibility to this workflow have been made.

3. Enhanced Security: No More Custom Scripts

For improved security, custom JavaScript and CSS will no longer be executed on the login page or registration pages.

4. New Native Features to Replace Custom Scripts

We have investigated the most common uses of custom scripts and are releasing two new features to accommodate them:

Native Discovery Page: This feature helps guide your users to the correct authentication method. Allows administrators to configure and enable a discovery page to redirect unauthenticated users to. When adding login buttons, admins will be able to select an existing authentication provider, button icon (no custom icons) and customize the button text.

Caption: Example of a customized discovery page with 3 login buttons.

Custom Label Text: You will be able to customize label text on the following key pages via the Canvas Theme Editor:
- Login Page
- Discovery Page
- Select User Role Registration Page
- Parent Registration Page

Caption: Shows an example of the custom text field on the Login Page

Watch future release notes for more information about both of these enhancements.

How Does the UI Update Affect User Experience?

The transition to the New Login UI will not impact your users' ability to log into Canvas.

The visual change will be most noticeable for users who rely on the following login methods:

Canvas Username/Password Authentication
LDAP
Social login buttons (Google, Microsoft, Clever)

Note: Social login buttons only appear on both the legacy and new Login UI if configured as authentication methods in your instance.

How to Prepare?

Enable and Test the New UI Now:

We strongly encourage you to enable the new Canvas Login Page UI before the automated migration deadline.

We recommend previewing and testing the changes first in your Beta environment before enabling in Production. This allows you to test the new experience, apply any necessary theme adjustments, and ensure it meets your expectations well ahead of the June 30, 2026 deadline.

Instructions to Enable the New UI:

Enable the Feature Flag: Enable the 'New Canvas Login UI' feature flag in your desired environment (Beta first!).
Customize Your Theme: Adjust the New Login UI as desired in the theme editor and apply the updated theme to your account.
Validate Changes: Navigate to the environment-specific URL to validate the visual changes:
- Beta: <beta_canvas_domain>/login/canvas
- Production: <prod_canvas_domain>/login/canvas

Self-Registration

If you allow self-registration (often used for Parent/Observer roles), we recommend you review those workflows and update any associated documentation.

Look for notifications

Root Account Administrators with the “Account-level settings - manage” permission will begin receiving automated notifications from Canvas about this pending deprecation if the “New Login UI” feature flag is not enabled in Production. Notification frequency will be monthly until the last month where it will be weekly.

For more information on the New Login UI, see the original release notes and explore the change in production at either of the links below:

Canvas Free For Teachers (with no branding customization)
Canvas Network (with Canvas Network branding)

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Canvas LMS

Comments

KathyPalm

Thanks for the information!
2 questions :)

Where can we find more information about the native discovery page and release date?
1. The only thing I have found so far is in the Catalog release notes (https://community.instructure.com/en/discussion/664741/catalog-release-notes-2026-02-02)
Currently in our SSO Settings we have a discovery URL. Will this be impacted by the new native discovery page?

Thank you!

jperkins

We are actively developing the native discovery page so we are targeting an April release this is subject to change.
Existing Discovery URLs will not be impacted by the new native discovery page release

ChristopherMcAvaney

@jperkins when will the native discovery page be in beta?

jperkins

As long as no unexpected issues arise, we anticipate the native discovery page feature to be available in Beta in March in preparation for the production April release.

ChristopherMcAvaney

Should the feature option for the new Login UI be in the test environment now? I checked yesterday and it wasn't there. I could only see it in beta and prod.

Robert

Hi @jperkins,

Is the custom text field going to allow links or formatting (i, b, bullets)?

Is the 'Trouble logging in?' link going to be customizable (hopefully in Auth providers) to point our users to our documentation. It would not be very functional if the link defaults to Canvas documentation for every Auth provider.

Thanks!

WCarterMVUSD

including an enforced whiteform background and reduced color options in the Theme Editor.

When's Dark Mode support rolling out? I've got some vision issues that make dark mode a great relief for me and I know I'm not alone in this, would be nice to see support from Canvas.

https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/blog/dark-mode-accessibility/

tmalone1

Just to be sure… we only use this for 2 people to login as System Admins.

This login screen will still work for them, it's just that you are chasing the appearance?

Thank you,

Tonia

rerickjef

I've enabled the setting in feature options, but not seeing any place in theme editor to change the theme with the updated look. Does it take awhile for the setting to be enabled?

AaronRamirez1974

Confused:

What users will this be for? We use SAML/SSO for staff and students, and even my own admin account. Is this change only for admins?

Thanks,

Aaron R.

GinaDonovanGC

How do we know if this will impact our institution? We are relatively new to Canvas (about a year) so I do not know if we are on legacy or new.

tlc_OU

I have the same question: we use PING SSO for login, and users are directed to that login screen. How would this UI change affect those of us with this setup?

MorgenWM

In the accordion menu on the left in the Theme Editor, look for the Login Screen option at the bottom. I believe that's all that's editable right now until the native discovery page is released in April (beta in March).

tbaker-mc

Correct — any user who uses your institution's native Canvas login screen "/login/canvas" will see this screen.

JStewardson

We currently have a vanity URL that directs users to the legacy login UI that includes a button at the bottom for staff/faculty to log in via SAML. I enabled the new UI in our beta instance and it doesn't appear that it contains an option to use SAML anymore, however it sounds like social logins would work if we had them enabled. Are there plans to have a SAML option added similar to how the legacy UI works?

tbaker-mc

&& @AaronRamirez1974

Any user who uses your institution's native Canvas login screen "/login/canvas" (e.g., https://institution.instructure.com/login/canvas) will see this screen. If a user uses an SSO page to log in (e.g., "/login/saml"), or your institution's default Canvas URL (e.g., https://institution.instructure.com) redirects to your SSO login page, they would not see the native Canvas login screen.

Ben_Cohan

Our discovery page has two options - one that leads to Canvas' native (old) login interface (this is for CE students), and another that leads to Google SSO (this is for full-time students and employees). Currently, users who choose the second option to sign in with Google but are doing so in a browser logged in with a personal Google account (i.e. not the one that has access to Canvas) get a 403 error. Note: this only happens when the user is logged into a single Google account which is not the school-issued one. If they are logged into multiple Google accounts, it presents a chooser. If they are not logged into any Google accounts, they are presented with a Google login UI.

Can you confirm that the improvements will address this issue? Other vendors who offer SSO through Google don't suffer from this effect - the user would instead be asked to select, or sign into, a Google account they wish to use, instead of the process assuming the user wants to use the Google account already present.

tbaker-mc

The big identifier of the difference between legacy and new is the top banner on the UI. In the new UI, the Canvas LMS logo is in the very left edge of the gray banner at the top. In the old UI, the gray banner is absent because it is not an element of the old login UI.

The new UI is not enabled by default, so there's a decent chance you're not using it. You'd have to verify by going to the native login page ("/login/canvas"). If you do not have the new UI enabled, it will be forced in the future update.

However, if your institution does not use the default Canvas login page (which would end in "/login/canvas"), then you would not inherently see this page.

tlwitt

If you see the red/black Canvas LMS header at the top of your login screen, you are using the new UI.

DavidSchlater

We never want general users to end up on this default page, since we only allow SSO - It would be good if the discovery page could allow for some customized text, and not give users a way to easily get to the default login page. It is only a backup login for a admins if SSO were to be down for an extended period of time, or broke in a way we needed to get in without SSO to fix it, etc. It would be nice to be able to obscure the URL for default login so it was not easily discoverable. I guess we wait till next month to see what the discovery page can do for us….

LisaStoll

You can check to see whether your are using the new Canvas login page by going to your root account Settings —> Feature Options —> New Canvas Login UI. If enabled, it will change the look of your login screen to be ADA compliant.

mbmacdonald

@jperkins - thanks for sharing. I feel a bit sheepish asking this but… what is a discovery page? I don't think we have one. Or do we?

jperkins

@ChristopherMcAvaney Thanks for the heads up on this. For some reason the feature flag was still toggled as hidden only in the Test environment. We're making this change and you should see it reflected in the Canvas Test environment later today.

LisaStoll

When will the custom label text option be available in the themes editor? I don't see that option now.

DavidSchlater

See above - they say March for this feature in Beta -

Native Discovery Page: This feature helps guide your users to the correct authentication method. Allows administrators to configure and enable a discovery page to redirect unauthenticated users to. When adding login buttons, admins will be able to select an existing authentication provider, button icon (no custom icons) and customize the button text.

jperkins

@Robert thanks for the questions!

The custom text field will not allow for links or specialized formatting. Links can always be added to the help menu that's displayed on the Login UI if needed. If the native discovery page is in use, there will also be a link back to the discovery page from the Canvas login UI if someone navigated there directly (either from the discovery page or from something like a google search). Are there specific needs that these options don't solve?

Let me look into this and get back to you. This could be an unintended consequence of a bug fix we recently did. Normally the 'Trouble logging in' button only appeared on Instructure managed Canvas instances (like Free for Teacher) where many institutional users mistakenly navigate to (instead of their institutional Canvas instance. The community migration facilitated an update to the link that was used and I believe that the script that was used applied that to all Instances. That being said, I like the idea of having it be available as a customizable field which probably won't be that hard to do. Essentially if the field is populated than the link would show up, otherwise it wouldn't. Happy to hear other's thoughts on this!

jperkins

@JStewardson thanks for your question!

The problem you're describing is one of the primary use cases for the new native Discovery page. It'll allow you to add any of our authentication methods as a button with custom text on that page. This will help guide your users to select the login method appropriate for them.

jperkins

@Ben_Cohan Thanks for your question!

This solution doesn't solve that particular problem. However we can certainly look into why our Google OAuth application behaves this way and look at making some improvements. I suspect this is a configuration option that didn't exist when we originally set up our application.

jperkins

@DavidSchlater Thanks for your feedback!

The discovery page will only ever show the login methods that you configure to be there. Your institution can choose to only have the one SSO button appear on that UI if you desire. The backup login method (which I assume is the Canvas login UI) would only be accessible via direct navigation.

jperkins

@mbmacdonald No need to feel sheepish about your question! A discovery page is a way for users with different ways of logging into Canvas to be able to select the correct login method for their user. Some institutions have different login methods for students and faculty, or they support different types of students. As an example, matriculating students might have SSO, but non-matriculating students may just sign into Canvas with a username and password. The discovery page helps present users with login options when they try to login to Canvas.

jperkins

We are targeting availability of this feature in the April production release (in March beta).

GregCyrier

Are there step by step instructions somewhere where we can see where to go look, and how to make changes?

jperkins

@WCarterMVUSD Thanks for your question! I know that dark mode support is actively being worked on by Instructure at this time, but am not directly involved in the delivery effort. Our public roadmap is the best place to get some insight into when this might be available. Your question is relevant though to this blog post and being able to support dark mode is directly related to our UI modernization efforts including this forced adoption of the new Login UI.

jperkins

If your default method for users logging in is one of our SSO protocols then these updates likely have very minimal impact to your institution's workflows.

jperkins

@GregCyrier There are instructions in the blog post for how to enable and test currently available features. The features that are not currently available will have some step by step instructions in the release notes where availability will be announced.

ggongwer

How do I determine my school's <beta_canvas_domain>?

MedborChavez

@GregCyrier I'm fairly new to the admin side of canvas, the blog says to Enable the 'New Canvas Login UI' feature flag, where exactly is that, settings, admin tools, somewhere else? Also is a Beta environment something that we should already have set up or is that an option that shows up somewhere for us to try t

dbrace

@ggongwer, I would recommend checking out the guide below.

-Doug

https://community.instructure.com/en/kb/articles/661604-how-do-i-access-the-canvas-beta-environment-as-an-admin

czile

It's typically the same as your production, except it will have the name test and beta in it. Example: For Production-:https://"school's name".instructure.com For Test- https://" school's name".test.instructure.com and for Beta-https://" school's name".beta.instructure.com

nwilson7

@jperkins This may get addressed when you determine why the "Trouble Logging in" is showing for others but right now, it is directing to a retired community page.

AHauerwas

The native discovery page will be on the critical path for our Canvas environment tied to Catalog, since we use it to present Canvas internal login vs. SAML as an option to students. Will definitely hope for an April release, since we'd want this in place prior to potential summer course offerings? (IIRC we use /login/canvas?discovery to display the option using code, though I could be mistaken.)

Robert

Thanks for your response @jperkins

1 - Link capability in the custom text field would allow us to immediately tell users where to click and who to call to get assistance, instead of burying it.

2 - Trouble Logging In - I am seeing it for /ldap and /canvas

It would be useful, if /canvas Trouble Logging In went to the Community doc, while for /ldap it would go to our own help page.

2.a - I feel like users would click Trouble logging in? before they think to click Help in the Footer.

2.a.b - Shifting to the Help Menu link can be done, but I don't think the feature and documentation is intuitive for this purpose. For instance, I just found out for this purpose that checking Everyone is what makes a link show up on the Login page for the Help Menu. The doc doesn't really get to that point. It would also be nice if we're expected to have end-user login support links in Help, that those links would not then clutter the help menu for users who are indeed logged in. Can the Help Menu (config - account/settings) be updated to make this more obvious with conditional placement? Literally [✓] Login Page (Visibility)

Overall, this looks promising, always happy to deprecate huge blocks of customization for native features.

lawd

@jperkins We wanted to confirm whether this will affect Single Sign On in any way. Our institution only uses SSO for our users and never the Canvas Login UI. Will this update affect our SSO process in any way?

qnguyen

If I have question about added Javascripts on the current version, who should I talk to? Can I just call the help line or escalate it to L2 directly. We have several Javascripst which embedded inside the Theme editor.

AllanBW

@jperkins The ability to at least remove elements (such as "Login or create an account") is vital for our environment, as such we currently use CSS to hide things that we don't want to be visible to avoid users creating accounts through the wrong process. Will the native discovery page allow for this as a feature? ie "show this element (x)" ?

david_turk

Assume, like us, the people who customised this page was to improve user experience. If we can't use customised JS and CSS please give us greater ability to customise this page, especially being able to add links or emails to help those who are having issues logging in.

gregvogl

To ensure clarity for the community regarding the transition timeline: Technically, a feature is deprecated when it remains functional but is no longer recommended for use. Since the New Login UI has been available since July 2025, the Legacy UI has effectively been in a deprecated state for some time.

Based on the July 1 migration date, it appears June 30 is the final date of service before the feature is fully decommissioned. Distinguishing between the 'deprecation period' (available but discouraged) and the 'decommissioning date' (removal of the feature) may help institutions better understand that after July 1, the legacy option will be entirely unavailable.

ChristopherMcAvaney

No, it won't affect SSO if that is your primary authentication method.

ChristopherMcAvaney

You can find this information in your root account settings, under the "Canvas Cloud Information" heading.

For example:

So, for my instance, the beta URL is macslearn.beta.instructure.com

ChristopherMcAvaney

There are account settings to disable those sort of links. It shouldn't require custom Javascript for that.

HugoLebegue

I am sure that the community will find this useful. You will find the toggle to enable this new Login.

As an admin, navigate to:

Admin → Root Account Settings → Feature Options → "New Canvas Login UI"

Optionally: search for Login

Warm regards to All

grayat

Thanks for this. May I know if we can enable this first and see how it looks before doing Step 2?

Instructions to Enable the New UI:

Enable the Feature Flag: Enable the 'New Canvas Login UI' feature flag in your desired environment (Beta first!).
Customize Your Theme: Adjust the New Login UI as desired in the theme editor and apply the updated theme to your account.
Validate Changes: Navigate to the environment-specific URL to validate the visual changes:
- Beta: <beta_canvas_domain>/login/canvas
- Production: <prod_canvas_domain>/login/canvas

reddeliuzza

Hello! From the information in the blog product above I understand that it should only be Root Account Administrators with the “Account-level settings - manage” permission who will receive the notification. However, in our institution, some of the other root admins who don't have this permission enabled, also received the email - can you please advise if this is expected and therefore all root admins should receive this email? Thanks

JStewardson

You can simply enable it in your beta instance first before doing prod

mzucal

It doesn't recognize my SSO intuitional password because there are not any in Canvas beta. So we won't be able to log in as a student/employee unless the student/employee has a password in beta. I cannot login with the feature turned on. My sis import does not send passwords. I have to contact support to turn that feature flag off in order to log in.

kwinterrowd

Forgive me for being a Canvas admin who accidentally fell into the IT world and still doesn't grasp some of this. I understand what the New Canvas UI Login feature is for - I call it the side door because it doesn't go through our SSO. Only me and IT have knowledge of that way to get in. So does this mean that my faculty and courses and students are not affected at all when I turn this on? THANK YOU ahead of time for judging silently and not aloud (I mean, you can.).

DavidSchlater

We also use this as more of a "Side Door". This should not impact SSO and that URL, and way you direct teachers and students to log in. You will want to use Beta to test this, and wait till next month when the option to use the Discovery Page will let you redirect users back to the SSO and try to convince them not to try to log in with the direct username and password box. Always use Beta until you are comfortable with doing a change like this in Production. Like many schools here, we modified our default login page to redirect folks back to our SSO link - we had some users finding it via Google or who knows how. Other schools allow several methods for login (based on the group) so it gets more complicated for them.

kwinterrowd

Okay awesome. That makes sense and thank you so much!

jbacigal

Also liking the idea of having the "Trouble Logging In?" button be customizable. If it could be editable by individual sub-accounts as well, that'd be even better for our institution. The root account could have their own help area, and then our sub-account could have a separate link as part of our theme

JoeGoldman

Hello, how do we log into the beta environment if we have no local canvas logins? In other words, we are all Google SSO. I tried doing a password reset from the beta environment /login/canvas page however, I never received the email to reset my password. My guess is because our beta environment doesn't have an account for me.

It's been so many years since I set this all up but our users (both staff and students) visit ourdomain.instructure.com and are automatically authenticated via Google and taken into Canvas. There is nothing they have to click. I'm thinking this change will have no impact on us.

dbrace

Hi @JoeGoldman,

My recommendation would be to go to https://SCHOOL.beta.instructure.com/login. That should take you to your primary authentication method, in your case that is Google SSO. You would then login and that should redirected into to your school's beta instance.

If that does not happen, I would recommend that you reach out to your Instructure/Canvas CSM or to Canvas Support directly.

-Doug

JoeGoldman

Thank you. Unfortunately I get an error message "There was a problem logging int at <my division>. You can try to log in again".

The login again option did work, I was able to log in with Google so that's good!

Should the URL have stayed school.beta.instructure.com? I ask because after logging in, my URL changed back to school.instructure.com. In other words, I'm afraid I "left" the beta environment back to our prod.

dbrace

If everything is working correctly, the URL should stay school.beta.instructure.com.

I am not a Google SSO / IdP admin but my guess would be that maybe your SSO (or possibly somehow your Canvas authentication setting) is "hard coded" to only be your Canvas LMS production environment (school.instructure.com) and not your Canvas LMS beta (school.beta.instructure.com) or Canvas LMS test (school.test.instructure.com) evironments.

Some IdPs are setup like that for security purposes.

-Doug

Debra-Sheridan

We are testing this in beta, mdc.beta.instructure.com, and found that there is no issue for our ADFS-managed authentication.
However, for manual accounts where the "authentication provider" is set as Canvas in the SIS Import file for manual accounts, there is an issue.
We can log in with our accounts, but if we click on Forgot Password to reset our password, we get an error message that the login ID is not valid. Before, an email would be sent to that username’s primary email on their profile.

Anyone else having this issue?

PittWu

Hi Jeremy,

It's great for Canvas to introduce this change.

I have this question for Login UI update:

As our Discovery Page is customised by a technical support from Instructure and our school is using it just fine, I am assuming this UI update won't impact our customised Discovery Page?

Cheers,

Pitt

AliRodley

Hi Debra yes we are having the same issue. We've noticed that all our parent accounts (that use the 'canvas' authentication method) were stripped of their login id during the first full batch sis import that was done following the change to new login UI. So when they try to reset password there is nowhere to send the reset.

Have you found any solution yet or had any reply from Instructure?

StuartAnderson

Thank you so much for this release @jperkins, this is very timely for my institution as we were in the middle of UX work to setup up our branding for the internal login page and discovery page. This new internal login page addresses almost all the concerns we had about accessibility. Kudos to your whole team for this work.

Just one question. I noticed the addition of the "Trouble logging in?" link. Will this link endpoint be customisable in the future? The information it points to is a good default, but we might want to add some specific context for our setup.

Keep up the great work,

Stuart
(The University of Manchester, UK)

PamelaPatterson

I cannot find the feature flag yet in my testing environment? What am I missing? Can you help?

adam_marshall

i'm also not seeing a way of editing the new login screen. What's the point of asking us to look at it if it cant be customised?

admin23

A true hero! Simple and clear, this is what I was looking for. Thank you.

CovadongaGonzalez

me neither! I'd also appreciate guidance.

MistySmith

I do not see it either. Where can I find it? Are there detailed instructions that I can use somewhere?

ChristopherMcAvaney

My guess is that if the "customised by a technical support" means it was custom development - then it could be supported under the change. But my guess is that it will impact and your customised Discovery Page will not work.

I am more than happy to be wrong here.

@jperkins are you able to confirm or deny?

TamiSnyder-Knut

I wish we could pin this to the top of the comments. This was the exact information I needed that wasn't located anywhere in the post. Thank you!

gcarlucc

I hope ClassLink is added as an authentication provider, or at least an icon for it. Our students use a SAML Canvas app in ClassLink.

PittWu

Hi Chris,

Thank you for your reply, the Discovery Page was done by a Canvas Technical Support, I hope it won't be affected.

Pitt

jperkins

Yes we're working towards adding an option to customize the T

jperkins

Someone else added some good instructions in this comment. Every Canvas instance also comes with a beta environment.

https://community.instructure.com/en/discussion/comment/1255540#Comment_1255540

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