Canvas knows every assignment you have. The problem is that it shows them in pieces: one course page at a time, a To Do list that only looks a few days ahead, and a calendar that mixes assignments with events. If you have four or five classes, it's easy to miss something.
Here are the three places Canvas already keeps your due dates, what each is good for, and how to get everything into one list.
1. The To Do list on your Dashboard
On the Canvas Dashboard, the right side shows a To Do list with upcoming work across all your courses. It's the quickest view, but it has limits:
- It focuses on the next few days, so work due in two weeks often isn't there yet.
- Items disappear once you submit or dismiss them, so you can't look back at what you finished.
- Some teachers post work as pages or files without a due date, and those never show up.
2. The Canvas Calendar
Click Calendar in the left menu. You'll see every course's assignments and events by day, week or month, with each course in its own color. You can uncheck courses on the right to hide them.
The calendar is the best place to see your whole semester, but it's a calendar, not a list. You can't check things off, and assignments sit next to office hours and club events.
3. The Calendar Feed (the one most students don't know about)
At the bottom right of the Calendar page there's a link called Calendar Feed. It gives you a private web address that contains your assignments and events from every course. Other apps can read this address and stay in sync with Canvas on their own.
According to Canvas's own guide, the feed includes events and assignments from up to a year ahead and the last 30 days. It does not include items from the To Do list that have no date. We walk through finding it step by step in How to find your Canvas calendar feed link.
Putting it all in one list
Once you have the feed link, you can paste it into an app that turns it into a to-do list. That's what lum9a does:
- Copy your Canvas Calendar Feed link.
- Open lum9a, go to Settings, then Canvas, and paste it.
- Your assignments show up as tasks, sorted by Overdue, Today, This Evening and the days ahead. New ones appear by themselves.
You can also add your own tasks next to your classes, like "gym every day" or "laundry Sunday", so school and life live in the same list.
Why one list beats checking every course
Every time you open a course page to look for due dates, you spend attention deciding where to look. With five classes, that's five places to check, five chances to miss something, and a lot of tabs. One list means one place to look, sorted by what's due first. It also lets you see a heavy day coming before it arrives, so you can start Tuesday's work on Sunday.
What one list won't fix
A list only knows what Canvas knows. If a teacher announces a deadline in class, posts it on an outside homework site, or forgets to set a due date, it won't come through the feed. Two habits cover this:
- Skim each syllabus once and add anything with a date that isn't in Canvas.
- Add things the moment you hear about them. In lum9a you can type it like you'd say it, for example "lab report thu 5pm", and it lands on the right day.
Common mistakes
- Using only the Dashboard To Do list. It's short-sighted by design. Use the Calendar or the feed for anything more than a few days out.
- Hiding courses on the Calendar and forgetting. If a class seems quiet, check that its box is still ticked on the right side of the Calendar page.
- Never looking at the list. One list only works if you open it. Pick a time, like after your last class, and make it automatic.
Tips that make one list actually work
- Check it once in the morning and once at night. Two looks a day is enough to never be surprised.
- Do the oldest thing first. Overdue work tends to get heavier the longer it sits.
- Re-check after you add a class. Canvas says to re-import the feed when you join a new course, so new classes show up.