Simpl Courses
What Simpl can see, and what it can’t.
Simpl redraws your school’s Canvas on your own device. Here is exactly what that means for your account, your data and your quizzes.
Last updated November 1, 2026. The privacy policy has the formal version.
Simpl can
- See what you can see in Canvas: your courses, work, grades and messages, through Canvas’s own student API, signed in as you.
- Do what you could do in Canvas: hand in, mark done, reply, star a course. Nothing a student can’t.
- Keep a copy on your device so screens open at once. In the Mac and Windows apps it’s encrypted, with the key in your Keychain or behind Windows Hello.
Simpl can’t, and doesn’t
- Make you sign up. There is no Simpl account.
- Read your courses on our server. Only your Simpl calendar is kept there, if you turn it on, and files sent from your phone pass through it on their way to your computer. Both are sealed, so only your devices can open them.
- Track you. No analytics, no ads, no trackers. The iPhone app even blocks Canvas’s own analytics scripts.
- See what your teachers see. It has your access, nothing more.
Your password
You type your password on your school’s own sign-in page. The browser extensions never see it.
The Mac, Windows and iPhone apps can remember your sign-in so you stay logged in. It stays on your device, in the Keychain on a Mac or iPhone and behind Windows Hello on Windows, and is never sent to us.
What else reaches the internet
Besides your school’s Canvas or Brightspace, only these, and each says what it is:
- Updates, from simplcourses.com and GitHub for the Mac, Windows and Safari apps, or from the Chrome Web Store.
- Wikipedia, in search. Search shows Wikipedia articles too, so what you type in search is sent to Wikipedia. The switch in the search box turns it off.
- Tools that come from their makers, only when you open them: the calculator from GeoGebra, the graphing calculator from Desmos. The file converter uses CloudConvert only if you give it your own key.
- A bug report, only when you press Send on the report page.
- Simpl Community, only when you open it or share a theme. A shared theme (its name, the name you sign it with, its colour and its pictures) is kept on simplcourses.com, and shows to everyone only once we’ve looked at it. Nothing about you, your school or your courses goes with it.
- Your Simpl calendar, only if you turn it on. Your work and plans for the next four months are sealed on your device and kept sealed on simplcourses.com. The key is in your private link, never sent to us on its own, so only an app given that link can read it. Stop sharing forgets it at once, and one not sent again for 120 days is forgotten too.
- Hand in from your phone, only when you open it on a hand-in. In the Mac and Windows apps the photos and files go from your phone to your computer over your own Wi-Fi. In the browser they pass through simplcourses.com, sealed on your phone with a key only your phone and your computer hold (it is in the QR code, in the part of the link that is never sent to a server), so we can’t open them, or read their names. Each file is deleted once your computer has it, and everything is deleted when you hand in or close the code, or after 30 minutes. Nothing is handed in until you press Submit on your computer. If simplcourses.com can’t be reached, your phone opens the assignment in Canvas instead.
Quizzes and updates
Simpl never reloads a quiz you’re taking, and Canvas saves each answer as you go.
The Mac and Windows apps hold an update while a quiz or a Knewton Alta assignment is open, and an update that comes by itself installs in the background without pulling Simpl to the front.
One exception: a critical update, which we send only to fix something serious, installs at once, even during a quiz. Your answers are already saved with Canvas, so you pick up where you were.
Turning it off
A small switch sits at the top right of every Canvas page. One click shows plain Canvas, on the exact page you were on. Click again to bring Simpl back. If Simpl ever can’t draw a page, it shows Canvas’s own page instead.
The code is public
Anyone can read exactly what Simpl does: the code is on GitHub. Found something wrong? Report it.
Removing Simpl
Settings → Data & about → Reset everything erases what Simpl kept. Then delete the app or remove the extension. Your Canvas account, grades and work are never touched.