Important Information: Issues with previewing certain file types in Canvas

Following an update in Canvas Speedgrader, text-based files associated with programming languages no longer display previews. Examples of such files include .py, .m, and .cs.

Instead of displaying in preview mode, a continuous loading symbol appears when these files are supposed to be shown.

The e-learning team is in contact with Canvas support, but the current information is that Canvas cannot provide an estimated resolution time. Many other educational institutions have also reported this issue to Instructure, the developers of Canvas. Read more about the status Instructures community site .

In the meantime, there is a temporary workaround, and further investigation for a solution is ongoing.

Temporary Solution

Change the file format to .txt, and the system will render the files correctly. As an instructor, you can ask your students to submit Python, Matlab, Java files, and other programming files that are not displaying correctly in Speedgrader as .txt files. It is also possible to restrict the assignment submissions to only accept .txt files. If it is more important to easily download the files and run the program on your computer, we recommend keeping the original file formats since it is still possible to download them via Canvas Speedgrader.