How To Hide Grades On Canvas

Managing grade visibility is one of the most critical administrative tasks an instructor handles within the Canvas Learning Management System. Whether you are finalizing exams, adjusting curves, or simply want to prevent student anxiety while grading is in progress, knowing how to hide grades on Canvas ensures you maintain control over the feedback loop. This guide provides a comprehensive walkthrough of the various methods available, from assignment-level settings to the Gradebook’s posting policies, ensuring you can choose the right approach for your specific workflow.

Understanding Canvas Grade Posting Policies

Before diving into the specific steps, it is essential to understand the core mechanism controlling visibility: the Grade Posting Policy. Canvas operates on two distinct policies that dictate exactly when students see their scores and feedback But it adds up..

Automatic Posting Policy (Default)

By default, most courses are set to an Automatic Posting Policy. This means the moment you enter a grade, submit a rubric assessment, or add a comment in SpeedGrader, that information becomes instantly visible to the student. While efficient for low-stakes quizzes or immediate feedback scenarios, this setting is risky during active grading periods for major assessments.

Manual Posting Policy

The Manual Posting Policy acts as a gatekeeper. When enabled, grades entered by the instructor remain hidden—visible only to the teaching team—until the instructor explicitly clicks a "Post Grades" button. This is the primary method for how to hide grades on Canvas effectively during the grading process. It allows you to grade all submissions, standardize scores, and release feedback to the entire cohort simultaneously, ensuring equity and reducing the flood of individual student emails asking why their neighbor has a grade and they do not Practical, not theoretical..

Method 1: Setting a Course-Wide Manual Posting Policy

If you prefer a "set it and forget it" approach where nothing is visible until you decide, applying a course-wide manual policy is the most dependable strategy. This is ideal for instructors who grade in batches or use curves.

1. manage to Grades in your course navigation menu.
2. Click the Settings (gear) icon in the top right corner of the Gradebook.
3. Select the Grade Posting Policy tab.
4. Choose Manually Post Grades.
5. Click Apply Settings.

Important Nuance: Changing this setting affects future assignments and existing assignments that have not yet had grades posted. If you have already entered grades for an assignment under the Automatic policy, those grades are already visible to students. Switching to Manual now will not retroactively hide them; you would need to use the "Hide Grades" function (detailed in Method 3) for those specific columns And that's really what it comes down to..

Method 2: Configuring Individual Assignment Posting Policies

Often, you want a mix: automatic posting for weekly reading quizzes but manual posting for the midterm and final. Canvas allows you to override the course default on a per-assignment basis. This granular control is often the preferred way for how to hide grades on Canvas for specific high-stakes items It's one of those things that adds up..

Via the Assignments Index Page

1. Go to Assignments in course navigation.
2. Locate the specific assignment.
3. Click the Options icon (three vertical dots) next to the assignment name.
4. Select Grade Posting Policy.
5. Choose Manually Post Grades and click Save.

Via the Gradebook Column Menu

1. In Grades, hover over the assignment column header.
2. Click the Column Menu icon (three vertical dots) that appears.
3. Select Grade Posting Policy.
4. Select Manually Post Grades and click Save.

A visual indicator—a small "MANUAL" label or an eye-with-a-slash icon—will appear next to the assignment name in the Gradebook header, confirming the policy is active.

Method 3: Hiding Grades After They Have Been Entered (The "Hide Grades" Feature)

This is the most common "emergency" scenario: you graded an assignment under the Automatic policy (or forgot to switch the policy), and now students are seeing scores you aren't ready to release. You cannot "un-see" a notification a student has already received, but you can hide the grade from the Grades page and SpeedGrader view immediately It's one of those things that adds up. Took long enough..

You'll probably want to bookmark this section.

1. Open Grades.
2. Hover over the assignment column header and click the Column Menu (three dots).
3. Select Hide Grades (or "Post/Hide Grades" depending on version).
4. A sidebar will appear. Select Hide Grades.
5. Click Hide.

What this actually does:

• The grades remain in the Gradebook for you.
• Students can no longer see the score in their Grades summary.
• The assignment disappears from the student's "Grades" page (though it remains on the Assignments page).
• Crucially: If a student already received a notification (email or push) with the score, that notification remains in their inbox. They just cannot click through to see the details in Canvas anymore.

To make them visible again later, follow the same steps but select Post Grades It's one of those things that adds up..

Method 4: Using SpeedGrader for Batch Grading and Posting

SpeedGrader is where the actual grading happens, and it has its own posting controls that sync with the Gradebook policies.

Grading with Manual Policy Active

If the assignment is set to Manual Posting:

1. Open SpeedGrader.
2. Grade submissions as normal (enter scores, use rubrics, leave annotations).
3. Notice the Submit button behavior: It saves the grade to the database but does not release it.
4. Once all submissions are graded, return to the Gradebook.
5. Click the Column Menu for that assignment > Post Grades.
6. Choose Everyone (or specific sections/students) > Post.

The "Hide" Button in SpeedGrader

If you are grading an assignment set to Automatic and want to pause visibility:

1. In SpeedGrader, look at the top right near the grade input field.
2. If grades are currently posted, you will see a Hide button (often represented by an eye icon with a slash).
3. Clicking this hides the grade for the currently viewed student or all students depending on the specific interface version, effectively toggling the visibility instantly without leaving the grading interface.

Method 5: Hiding Assignment Totals and Final Grades

Students often obsess over the "Total" column calculating their running grade throughout the semester. If you use weighted assignment groups or have ungraded items skewing the average, you likely want to hide this cumulative score until the term ends Simple as that..

1. Go to Settings in course navigation.
2. Click the Course Details tab.
3. Scroll down and click more options (at the bottom).
4. Check the box: Hide totals in student grades summary.
5. Click Update Course Details at the bottom.

This removes the "Total" column and the percentage/letter grade calculation from the student's Grades view entirely. They will see individual assignment scores (if posted) but not the aggregated course grade Less friction, more output..

Advanced Scenarios and Troubleshooting

Hiding Grades for Specific Students (Excused/Moderated)

Sometimes you need to hide a grade for one student (e.g., an academic integrity investigation or a late submission exception) while posting for the rest.

1. In Grades, click the specific cell for that student/assignment.
2. Click the Grade Detail Tray icon (arrow/box icon) that appears on the right.
3. In the