AI Overlay for Canvas New Quizzes Lockdown on Mac
Canvas New Quizzes ships with its own lockdown toggles from Instructure, distinct from the Respondus LockDown Browser plugin. The platform itself restricts navigation, hides results, and gates by IP, all without a third-party proctor binary running on the student machine.
Instructure built-in Quiz Engine lockdown is configured per-quiz via instructor checkboxes: Filter IP addresses, Require an access code, Shuffle questions, Shuffle answers, One question at a time, Allow Calculator (Basic or Scientific), Restrict student result view, and a hard time limit. None of these settings involve a desktop installer, kernel hooks, or screen recording. Everything happens inside the Canvas page in Chrome, Safari, or Firefox.
Key points
- Native Canvas lockdown uses JavaScript visibilitychange and IP filtering, not OS-level capture.
- Quiz settings under New Quizzes include Filter IP addresses, Require access code, and Restrict student result view as separate switches.
- The Stimulus/passage view and on-screen calculator both render inside the same tab.
- Instructure has confirmed New Quizzes will not gain a built-in proctor.
- Tab-switch logging is recorded as a Log event in the Moderate page.
How it works
┌── macOS host ─────────────────────────────────┐ │ ┌── Safari/Chrome ─────────────┐ │ │ │ ┌── proctoring extension ─┐ │ │ │ │ │ Browser screen-capture │ │ ← reads │ │ │ │ → exam recording │ │ visible │ │ │ └─────────────────────────┘ │ pixels │ │ └──────────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ │ ┌── LDBypass overlay ──────────┐ ← rendered │ │ │ ChatGPT / Claude / Ollama │ excluded │ │ └──────────────────────────────┘ from cap │ └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Compatibility on Mac
| macOS 14 Sonoma+ | Yes (required for window-privacy API) | ✓ |
| Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) | Native arm64 build | ✓ |
| Intel Macs (2019+) | Universal binary supported | ✓ |
| Canvas New Quizzes (LMS-native) | No installer; runs in browser tab | ✓ |
| Canvas Classic Quizzes | Same browser-only model | ✓ |
Common questions
How is native New Quizzes lockdown different from Respondus LockDown Browser?
Native lockdown is a set of Canvas settings that run in your normal browser. Respondus LockDown Browser is a separate Chromium fork the student downloads.
Will Canvas detect that I switched to the overlay?
Canvas only flags events the browser itself reports.
Does the IP filter affect the overlay?
No. IP filtering checks the student public IP before the quiz loads.
What about the Moderate page log entries?
Moderate logs record clicks, answers, and tab-visibility changes inside the Canvas tab.
Can my professor turn on screen capture without using Respondus?
Not through native New Quizzes.