Media
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Description
PotatoCanvas: a heartier Canvas LMS. Grades on cards, exam countdowns, due dates, message alerts, themes, and a study helper. WHAT IT IS PotatoCanvas is a browser extension that turns the Canvas LMS dashboard into your semester's command center. It works on any school's Canvas site (*.instructure.com). Plain Canvas hands you a grid of course cards and makes you dig into each one to find your grade, your next deadline or your midterm date. PotatoCanvas digs those up for you and lays them out on the dashboard, so one glance answers "how am I doing, what is due, and when are my exams?" Small, filling, and it goes with everything. WHY INSTALL IT • Save clicks every day. Grades, due dates, exam dates, unread announcements and today's classes are visible the moment Canvas opens. No more opening five courses to check five things. • Never miss an exam. Midterm and final dates are found automatically in each syllabus and calendar and shown as a countdown, sorted by "this week / two weeks / a month / later". • Know where you stand. Every course card shows your current total, an estimated GPA and the class average with your distance from it, using the statistics Canvas already publishes. • Catch the messages that matter. A bell on each course shows unread announcements and inbox messages; room changes, cancelled classes, quizzes and deadline changes are highlighted automatically. • Study smarter with your own AI key. Ask for a hint, a worked solution or an explanation on any page, build flashcards and practice quizzes from your course files, and keep a personal question bank. You pick the provider; the key never leaves your browser. • Dress Canvas your way. Ten preset themes, from a calm dark mode to a pixel-art night sky (one of them even has a potato watermark), plus fully custom colors and backgrounds. • Private by design. No account, no server, no tracking. Everything runs in your own Canvas session; nothing is sent to the developer. Potatoes do not phone home. WHAT YOU GET Dashboard panels (toggle and reorder): due this week, GPA estimate, midterm/final countdown, professor absence notices, latest announcements and inbox messages, today's classes (from the Canvas calendar or a manual timetable), and a sidebar of quick links you can edit. For Rutgers students there are a few extras: import your WebReg schedule PDF for today's classes, section badges parsed from Rutgers course codes, and a preset list of campus links. Everything else works the same on any Canvas. Course cards: total grade (percent and letter), GPA estimate, class average with min–max range, section number, and a message bell with unread count. Gradescope sync: log in to gradescope.com once; PotatoCanvas fills your Gradescope scores into ungraded assignments' what-if grades on the Canvas Grades page. Existing grades are never changed. Study assistant (bring your own API key): double-click a paragraph, select text, right-click or press Alt+Shift+A for hints, solutions, concept explanations or translations; screenshot a region for formulas and figures. The study drawer adds page chat, a local knowledge base built from your own course files, flashcards with spaced repetition, practice quizzes, and one-click course file download with AI summaries. Works with the major AI providers, plus any service with a compatible chat API. The assistant stays switched off on quiz-taking pages and inside any form you are answering. Themes: ten presets ranging from a calm dark mode to seasonal and retro looks, plus custom accent color, sidebar color, background image and card style. Themes also cover the calendar, Files, Assignments, Modules and Grades pages. Bilingual interface (English / 中文) that follows your browser language. A short onboarding page and an in-page tour get you set up in two minutes. GOOD TO KNOW • Requires the classic card dashboard ("Switch to old dashboard view"). • GPA and class-range figures are estimates; grading scales differ by professor. • Privacy policy: https://github.com/ISmkuI/better-canvas-rutgers/blob/main/store/PRIVACY.md • Open source: https://github.com/ISmkuI/better-canvas-rutgers • Not affiliated with Instructure or any university. Affiliated with potatoes only in spirit.