Canvas @ Yale

Trouble Accessing External Application Tools on Canvas from iOS Devices

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iOS devices (such as iPhone and iPad) can experience issues accessing external application content and tools on Canvas. iOS devices have a specific security setting for their apps which creates an issue with login / authentication passing from Canvas to other external tools. This issue can create an endless log in loop, just fail to load the tool or content, or require the user to login again at the point of the tool.

Disabling the specific security setting for any of the iOS apps you use to access Canvas (Canvas Student, Canvas Teacher, Safari, Chrome, Mozilla Firefox) will resolve the access issue by allowing a user's authentication information to pass correctly from Canvas to an external application.

External Tools known to experience an issue with passing login authentication information on iOS devices:

  • Media Library (Panopto)
  • Course Reserves (Ares)
  • VoiceThread

Other external tools may also experience this issue, even if they are not listed here.

  1. On your iOS device, navigate to the "Settings" page.
  1. From the side menu of the Settings page, select the application you use to access Canvas.
    1. This can be any browser (such as Safari, Chrome, or Firefox) or the specific Canvas apps available through the App Store (such as Canvas Student or Canvas Teacher apps).
  2. Once selected, toggle the "Prevent Cross-Site Tracking" setting so that it is off.

Different versions of iOS may represent this setting as "Enable Cross-Site Tracking," in which case you will want to toggle this on.

  1. Once done, close and re-open the application on your iOS device, and try accessing Canvas / the external application or content again.

You my also explore the following support articles for more assistance:

For any additional questions, please reach out to [email protected].

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