Canvas Important Update: Effective September 22, 2025, YouTube videos embedded in Canvas courses may display advertisements. Canvas Studio provides an ad-free solution.
Why migrate YouTube videos?
Moving your YouTube videos to Canvas Studio creates a distraction-free learning experience for students by removing ads, video recommendations, and overlays, while giving you better viewing analytics and automatically preserving captions.
How to migrate to Canvas Studio:
You can migrate your YouTube videos in two ways - using the Migration Tool or manually migrating individual videos. We recommend using the Migration Tool as it's faster and more efficient, especially if you have multiple videos to convert.
Method 1: Using the Migration Tool
Step 1: Scan Your Course
In your course, click YouTube Migration in the left navigation menu
Click Scan Course to find all embedded YouTube videos.
Review the list showing where videos are located and how many were found.
Step 2: Convert Your Videos
Click Review next to the content you want to migrate.
Click Convert for each video.
The button will change to "Converted" when migration is completed.
Click Close when finished.
Done! Your videos are now replaced within the course where they were originally embedded and saved in your Course Collections.
Note: If you don't see the "YouTube Migration" link in your course navigation menu, you may need to enable it manually. Go to Settings → Feature Options → search for "YouTube content migration" → set to Enabled.
Method 2: Manual Migration (For Individual Videos)
Step 1: Get the Video URL
In Canvas, locate the embedded YouTube video you want to migrate.
Click "Watch on YouTube" (bottom-left corner of video)
Copy the URL from your browser's address bar
Return to Canvas and click Edit on your page/assignment
Step 2: Remove the Old Video
Highlight the embedded video and press Delete or Backspace
OR click the HTML Editor button and delete the embed code
Step 3: Add to Canvas Studio
In the Rich Content Editor, click the Studio icon in the toolbar
Click Create → Add Media.
Paste your YouTube URL in the field.
Click Add Video
Step 4: Embed the New Video
Click on your newly added video thumbnail
Adjust settings if needed (start time, size, etc.)
Click Embed Media to embed the video.
Click Save to save the changes.
Done! Your video is now in your personal Studio library and embedded without ads.
If you need assistance migrating your YouTube content or have questions, please contact the IT Helpdesk.
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Copy of the email that was sent to all faculty:
Canvas Update: YouTube Migration to Canvas Studio
Dear Faculty,
We want to inform you of an upcoming change that will affect how YouTube videos display in Canvas courses.
Effective September 22, 2025, YouTube videos embedded in Canvas courses will display advertisements. These ads are managed by YouTube and cannot be turned off within Canvas.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This change will not affect the availability of your videos. If you take no action, they will remain in your courses, and students will continue to have access to them. The only difference will be that the videos will play with advertisements.
Recommended Option 1: Migrate to Canvas Studio
We strongly recommend migrating your YouTube videos to Canvas Studio to maintain an ad-free learning experience. Canvas Studio offers several advantages.
Canvas Studio provides advertisement-free video playback with automatic caption import, student viewing analytics, interactive quiz features, and a centralized media library.
Please follow these instructions to migrate your YouTube videos to Canvas Studio.
Recommended Option 2: Continue Using YouTube Links
Faculty who chooses not to migrate YouTube videos to Canvas Studio and continue to use YouTube links or embeds in the existing courses should consider adding this course disclaimer:
"Some video content may contain advertisements that are not associated with Regent University."
If you need assistance migrating your YouTube content or have questions, please contact the IT Helpdesk.