Canvas for students

This needs no approval from your school. It brings in your assignments and the classes they belong to.

If you're under 18, Canvas connects with your calendar feed link only. It brings in your assignments and the classes they belong to, and nothing else. An access token can do anything you can in Canvas, so Nirvaana doesn't ask for one.

1. In Canvas, open “Calendar”, then press “Calendar Feed”, and copy the link it shows. It ends in .ics.
2. In Nirvaana, open Your connections and find “Canvas”. It starts on “Calendar feed link”.Add your class calendar
3. Paste the link and press “Connect Canvas”. Your school and classes come in at once.

If you're under 18, this way isn't shown: use your calendar feed link.

If you're under 18 and connected with an access token before, the Canvas card says “Reconnect with your calendar feed”. Nirvaana no longer uses the access token you connected with. Your school and classes stay as they are. Reconnect with your calendar feed link to keep them up to date. You can delete the token in Canvas, under Account, then Settings.

1. In Canvas, open “Account”, then “Settings”, and press “New Access Token”. Give it a name like “Nirvaana” and copy the token. Canvas shows it only once.
2. In Nirvaana, open Your connections, find “Canvas”, and choose “Access token”.Connect Canvas
3. Type your school's Canvas address, the one in your browser when you use Canvas: something like yourschool.instructure.com, or canvas.yourschool.edu. Paste the token, and press “Connect Canvas”.

Nirvaana checks the token with your school's Canvas first, and keeps it locked away. It is only ever sent to that one address. You can delete it in Canvas whenever you like, under Account, then Settings.

• One world for your school. If you connect again later, it's the same world: never a second one.
• A moon for each class you're enrolled in this term, named after the class, with its teacher and course code. Canvas doesn't always say when a term runs (a calendar feed link never does): every class it lists you in comes in anyway, and only a class whose term has ended is left out.
• Each class's “Study” is read from Canvas as soon as you connect, and again a few times a day, so it's ready when you open it.
• Each assignment due from now on becomes a promise with its due date, so it shows on your Calendar.
• With an access token, each class's announcements show as notes in its moon, and its syllabus is kept as a file in the moon's “Files” tab. A calendar feed link brings neither.
• Nirvaana checks Canvas for you a few times a day, even when you don't open it. When a new term starts, your school's world shows “2 new classes. Add them?”: press “Add them” and they become moons. Nothing is made until you press it. “Not now” hides them, and they're never offered there again; they stay on the Canvas page, to add any time. A class you drop, or one that ends, is archived: its moon and everything in it stay exactly as they are.
• Canvas makes up to 30 class moons and 3 schools for you, archived classes included. They never count toward your plan's worlds and moons. When you reach 30, the page says so: remove an old archived class to make room (its moon and everything in it go, and its promises stay yours), or add a moon to your school yourself, under “Moons” in its “Settings” tab, which counts toward your plan.
• Canvas comes with the subscription, at the one price for everyone, students included: 7 days free, then $9.99 a month. Cancel anytime in Settings. Free trial and subscription.

If you're 18 or over and sign in to Canvas in the Nirvaana app on your Mac or PC, each class's course files are kept in its moon's “Files” tab too, under their Canvas names and marked “From Canvas”, like the syllabus. They come last in each sync, so they never hold up what's due.

• Only documents: PDFs, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OpenDocument, RTF, text, CSV and Markdown files. Videos, audio, images and zip files stay in Canvas, and so do Keynote, Pages and Numbers files for now.
• A file is copied once. If your teacher updates it in Canvas, the new version takes its place; a file you retire in Files is never brought back.
• Up to 100 MB a file, and up to 1 GB and 200 files a class each sync; the rest come next time. Your plan's room for files still counts, and when it's full the app stops copying and says so.
• If you're under 18, course files aren't kept, and the syllabus comes as a short note instead. It only ever reads your classes' own files, never anyone's submissions.

With the Nirvaana app keeping your Canvas up to date, each class's lectures with captions are kept in its moon's “Files” tab too, as readable transcripts marked “From Canvas”: the videos in the class's “Media Gallery”, and class videos in Canvas with captions your teacher added. Each is named after its lecture, like “Lecture 3 - transcript.md”, with its date and length when they're known.

• The words are the video's own captions, English when there are any, made easy to read: no timestamps, in paragraphs, with a time mark every five minutes so you can find the place in the video.
• A lecture with no captions yet is counted in the sync's summary and looked at again later. Nothing is ever transcribed from the audio.
• Up to 100 lectures a class each sync; the rest come next time. When a lecture's captions are updated, the new transcript takes the old one's place, and one you retire in Files is never brought back.
• The app opens the Media Gallery as clicking it in Canvas does, with your own sign-in on your computer, and reads only the videos' captions, never comments or views. Transcripts come from the lectures and videos in your class's Media Gallery that you can already watch, and go only into your own class moon. If you're under 18, lecture transcripts aren't kept.

Grades are off until you turn them on, on the Canvas card in Your connections (“Turn grades on”). Nirvaana doesn't read them to set up your school either way.

• Only you are in it. Classmates are never added for you. Your school world is yours alone, until you choose to invite someone.
• If you're under 18: Your classes are private: only you can see them, and no one can be invited into them.
• Your AI (Claude, ChatGPT, Codex or Gemini) can read your Canvas only if you turn on “Let your AI read this” for Canvas, and never if you're under 18.
• “Disconnect” on the Canvas card forgets the token or the feed link. Your school, its classes and their promises stay, as your own.

If Your connections doesn't show a Canvas card you can connect, Canvas hasn't reached your account yet. You can still make a world for your school yourself, and a moon for each class.