Canvas can send your due dates to Google Calendar for free. Here’s how, what it leaves out, and what to do when the dates themselves are wrong.
The free way: your Canvas calendar feed
- In Canvas, open Calendar from the left menu.
- At the bottom of the right side, click Calendar Feed and copy the link it shows.
- In Google Calendar on a computer, next to Other calendars, click the plus, then From URL.
- Paste the link and click Add calendar.
Your Canvas assignments and course events now show up in Google Calendar, and on your phone too.
What the feed leaves out
- Anything without a due date in Canvas. To-dos, readings and quizzes your professor never dated don’t appear.
- Dates that only live in the syllabus or an announcement. If a quiz is in the syllabus PDF but not set up in Canvas, the feed doesn’t know about it.
- Fresh changes. Google refreshes calendars added by link on its own schedule, so a date your professor moved can take hours to show up.
- Checking things off. It’s a calendar, not a to-do list, so nothing tracks what you’ve finished.
When Canvas has the date wrong
The feed copies whatever Canvas says. When a professor updates the syllabus or posts an announcement but doesn’t fix the date in Canvas, your calendar is wrong too.
That’s the part Secretariat handles. It reads Canvas plus each class’s syllabus and announcements, so a date Canvas got wrong or never had still lands on the right day, and when Canvas moves something you choose Move or Keep. You get one to-do list you can check off, and you can still send it to Google Calendar from Settings. It only reads Canvas and never changes anything there.
See how Secretariat works or read what it reads and never touches.
Blackboard, Brightspace or Moodle?
They have calendar links too: look for Share calendar (Blackboard), Subscribe (Brightspace) or Export calendar (Moodle) in their calendar settings, then add the link to Google Calendar the same way. Secretariat takes those links as well.