Customizable Dashboard for Learners | Feature Overview

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Release Timing: Generally Available in April 2026 as a Feature Option
Regional Availability: Globally Supported
Customer Type: All Customers (excluding elementary)
Available with: Canvas

Key Takeaway: Customizable Dashboard for Learners introduces customizable dashboard widgets that give students a more personalized and actionable starting point in Canvas, helping them quickly see what matters most across their courses and get where they need to go faster.

The Dashboard is the first page students see after logging into Canvas, yet the legacy experience has offered limited value and presents the same entry point for all users regardless of their role or needs. For students, this often means navigating into individual course shells to find key information, slowing down their workflow and making it harder to stay oriented across their coursework.

Customizable Dashboard for Learners enhances this experience by introducing customizable, student-focused widgets that surface important information right away. Students can personalize their dashboard to highlight the insights most relevant to them, bringing key information from across enrollments into a single view. The result is a more useful and actionable starting point in Canvas that helps students stay organized, reduce unnecessary navigation, and focus on what matters most.

If you'd like to share your feedback, you can click the "Let us know" link on either experience.

Administrative Highlights:

Enablement –
- Desktop & Mobile (Android 8.6 or above, iOS 8.9 or above) – “Customizable Dashboard for Learners” feature option. Once enabled by Administrator, learners can enable/disable it from the Dashboard on the web, and can manage it from the Dashboard settings screen on mobile.
Default State – Off by default
- Mobile – Early opt-in accounts will have it automatically enabled at GA and can switch between the old and new dashboard, while other accounts must enable it at the admin level first.
- Once the feature option is enabled by the administrator, the new experience will be off for the user on web and on for the user on mobile.
Configuration Availability – Root account and user level
- Once enabled at the root account, student users can opt-in to the customizable dashboard experience.
- Because student dashboards review all course enrollments, sub account and course configuration is not supported.

Video Walkthrough:

https://productmarketing.instructuremedia.com/embed/634878d9-8f39-40f2-b92b-a65d15cc59ec

Shareable Link

Change Management Resources:

Release Notes - April 18, 2026

FAQ

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Comments

MARISSASCHRADER

What happens if this is enabled and we have elementary school using Elementary Theming? Does this not apply if Elementary Theming is enabled?

Anna Lindsay

Hi Marissa! We cover this and other questions that may arise within the linked FAQ!

jlee16

If a student is using this view and later receives a TA appointment, does this view suddenly disappear for them once they are enrolled in the course they are TAing? Even if they are still taking classes as a student?

Anna Lindsay

Hi there - that is correct. The customizable dashboard is currently built for users with exclusively student roles. If a TA enrollment was added for that user, they would lose access to this student dashboard experience.

We anticipate this experience to evolve as educator and admin level dashboards are developed. Here are a few links to track those projects in our collaborative roadmap space:

Action-Oriented Educator Dashboard

Unified Canvas Insights Dashboard

EmilyCottrell

Hey! Did some poking around as one of our test students and noticed that the ability to add a task to the to-do list breaks if you attempt to attach it to a course. If there's no course selected it will add the task just fine.

But I do want to say I LOVE the idea of being able to add "tasks" to the list that aren't specifically attached to an assignment. I would love for teacher/faculty to be able to build "tasks" for students that automatically appear in to-do lists (but aren't official assignments" — we have faculty who want to remind folks to go fill out that form on that other site or to read this article before class. Would love to see this feature be more broad scale, but glad to see it nonetheless.

dbrace

Hi @EmilyCottrell,

One way to go about doing this is for a teacher to create a page and then set the page as a to-do item.

https://community.instructure.com/en/kb/articles/660957-how-do-i-add-a-page-to-the-student-to-do-list-as-an-instructor

-Doug

EmilyCottrell

Thanks Doug. I'll add this to the list of ways we can navigate around this need—but it does seem like this may be possible given it shows up on the student to-do list widget. Fingers crossed we can get something like this on the teacher/faculty side so we don't have to build more pages and assignments (current options) to add a reminder for students.

jlee16

Thank you for these links, @Anna Lindsay! Of course, I submitted my "must have" vote without acknowledging that student TAs would benefit from the educator dashboard, as well. It would be great if we could edit our comments!

gcarlucc

Hi @EmilyCottrell ,

You may want to report this to Support, because I couldn't replicate the issue with a test student. I created a to-do item WITH a course associated and one WITHOUT, and neither caused an issue. I also marked both as completed with no issue. Just thought I'd share. 😊

emily-mckeag

I was able to do the same and didn't run into any issues.