Organize your Canvas Course List and Dashboard

 
If your Canvas Course List and Dashboard feels cluttered, overwhelming or just confusing, you can customize it. A few quick changes can make a big difference, helping you focus on the courses you are actively using and making it easier to tell them apart. Here's how:

Select your "favorites"

When you are enrolled in (or teach) more than one Canvas course, you can customize the active courses you want to show in your Course List. Courses you want to show in the Courses drop-down menu are called favorite courses. You can favorite any active course that appears on the Course List page. Course favorites also display in the Card View Dashboard.

When no courses are favorited, Canvas will automatically display up to 20 courses, ordered by role, with instructor/TA listed first, then student. However, once you have selected at least one course as a favorite, only your favorite courses will appear in the Courses list.

Note: Courses are always listed alphabetically; you cannot reorder your courses manually.

1. In Global Navigation (far left), click the Courses link [1] (a book icon)
2. Click the All Courses link [2] (at the top).
3. To favorite a course so it is displayed on your course Dashboard, click the star next to a course [3]. 

Other things to note:

• When you favorite at least one course, the Dashboard will only display favorited courses. Canvas will also continue to automatically favorite new course enrollments.
• Unpublished courses can be identified by a gray background and the Published column. You can favorite unpublished courses.
• Courses that have concluded will appear after unpublished courses in your Course List. Favorited courses are not automatically removed as a favorite. If a past enrollment course still shows as a favorite, users can unfavorite the course by toggling the star icon, but you cannot re-favorite an inactive course. 

BONUS: Further Dashboard customization

If it makes you happy, or less confused by similarly titled courses, you can customize the course Dashboard image. 

When you're in your course, click on Settings in the course-level menu:

1. Click Choose Image [1]. After you've added one, you can click the three dots in the upper right of the image to change the photo [2]. 
2. Click Save at the bottom of the course details page. 

Customize the color, nickname, and order

Note: These are individual settings on your dashboard. You can customize them for yourself, but you cannot control these for your learners.

1. When on the Dashboard, click on the three dots in the upper right of the course card [3]
2. On the Color tab, you can choose a color for the image overlay and change the course title/nickname.
3. On the Move tab, you can move the location of the course card on the dashboard, or unfavorite the course.

This post is an updated version of a previously published article.