Canvas has a standard set of notifications you’ll get for your child’s courses, like announcements or due dates. But you can change these settings to fit what you want to be notified about. These changes only affect your own account—they don’t change anything for teachers or other users. Any changes you make will apply to all your child’s courses, unless you choose to set different notifications for each course separately.
Notification Overview
- In Global Navigation, click the Account link [1], then click the Notifications link [2].

- A banner displays stating account-level notification settings apply to all of your Canvas courses, however, any course-specific notification settings override account notification settings [2]. To dismiss the message, click the Close icon [3].
- A banner displays when daily and weekly messages are delivered [4]. To dismiss the message, click the Close icon [5].
- You can choose to set notifications for your entire Canvas account or for each course separately. To do this, use the "Settings for" dropdown menu—this lets you manage notifications for all courses at once or just for a specific course.
- View the account-level notification types [6] and your listed contact methods [7]. Each notification has a default delivery frequency setting. To view the current notification delivery frequency for a notification type and contact method, hover over the notification icon [8].
- To view details for a notification, hover over the notification name.

Manage Notification Settings
To allow or disallow the name of the observed student to display in notifications (allowing this can be useful when you have multiple students), use the Show name of observed students in notifications toggle [1]. Currently only grade update notifications include observed student names.
To change a notification delivery frequency for a contact method, locate the notification and contact method. Then click the notification icon [2]. You can select one of four delivery frequency types:
- Notify immediately [3]: receive these notifications right away. These notifications may be delayed by up to one hour in case an instructor makes additional changes, which prevents you from being spammed by multiple notifications in a short amount of time.
- Daily summary [4]: receive a daily summary for this notification type.
- Weekly summary [5]: receive a weekly summary for this notification type.
- Notifications off [6]: no notifications sent for this notification type.
Notes:
- Account-level notification settings automatically apply to all of your courses. However, you may be able to manage notifications for a single course.
- Twitter notification settings do not support daily summary or weekly summary options.
- Unregistered contact methods display on the Account Notification Settings page but notifications will not be sent until you confirm the registration.
If you've set a notification setting for an email address that is not associated with your institution, a Privacy Notice may display. To close the warning, click the OK button. Once the warning displays and is dismissed once, it will not display again.
