Promoting external tool LTI (Canvas Studio) icon to RCE top menu

In our instance, we've disabled the legacy media upload tool in favor of the Canvas Studio tool. What we'd like to have is for the icon to show up without having to use the "plug" dropdown icon (see image). We'd like the Canvas Studio icon to show up on its own in the top level menu.

Any ideas on how this is done? See "current" and "desired" below:

Screenshot 2026-03-09 at 10.56.07 AM.png

"desired"

Screenshot 2026-03-09 at 10.58.47 AM.png

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Accepted answers

Chris

Hi @lmurray2,

The How do I add an external tool to the Rich Content Editor toolbar in an account? - Instructure Community guide should show you the steps you need to complete (as an admin) to have the Canvas Studio icon appear on the main RCE toolbar.

-Chris

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Chris

Hi @lmurray2,

-Chris

lmurray2

@Chris

I did try that but this was the result:

Screenshot 2026-03-09 at 11.42.38 AM.png

What I want is for the icon to show up in the actual top-level menu bar.

I found this documentation about button placement in git-hub, but I'm not sure if it applies to Canvas Studio as a "native" application? https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/blob/master/doc/api/editor_button_placement.md

Chris

Hi @lmurray2,

You may need to wait 20-30 minutes after favoriting Canvas Studio for it to appear in the new spot (and assuming you don't have more than one other thing favorited). That's really the only native and supported option to do what you want, but it should be exactly what you need after it actually kicks in.

-Chris

lmurray2

here's what we figured out —

we had to configure Canvas studio at both the root and the subaccount level in order for the menu item to show up how we wanted it to.

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