Stopped viewing the Canvas quiz-taking page: what it means

What does “Stopped viewing the Canvas quiz-taking page” mean?

It means the Canvas quiz page stopped being the page in front of you. Instructure's quiz log guide defines it in one sentence: the status “displays when a student navigates away from the quiz (closes the browser tab, opens a new browser tab, or navigates to a different program).”

It is one of four timestamped statuses in the Classic Quizzes action log. Our guide to every Canvas quiz log event covers the other three.

Two conditions sit around it. First, “Quiz Log Auditing is currently a course opt-in feature”, so a Classic quiz has a log your instructor can open only when the course turned the feature on. Second, “Quiz logs are only retained for six months.” New Quizzes has its own View Log on the Moderate page. Per the Moderate page guide, it shows the time elapsed during each event and “moments of stopping and resuming the quiz”.

Under the log, the Canvas Quiz Submission Events API stores a page_blurred event when focus leaves and a page_focused event when it returns. In Instructure's examples both carry "event_data": null: no web address, no tab title, no application name.

What triggers a stopped viewing entry?

Instructure lists three actions. Browsers add a few more ways for a page to lose focus.

• Opening a new browser tab. On Instructure's list. Searching the question in a second tab is the textbook case.
• Closing the browser tab. On Instructure's list.
• Moving to a different program. On Instructure's list: a notes app, a chat app, a calculator, another browser window.
• Minimizing the browser, or switching apps on a phone. MDN's visibilitychange reference says a page becomes hidden when you minimize the browser or, on mobile, switch to a different app.
• A screen that turns off or locks. MDN's Page Visibility API page counts a page as hidden when the device's screen is off.
• Clicking a notification. In the Instructure Community forum, a Canvas admin gave this example: a student clicks an email or text pop-up and lands in another program.

The last three are browser behaviour and a forum example, not items on Instructure's list, so treat them as things that can write the line, not things that always will. For split screen, see the tab-switching guide on split screen and second monitors.

What does “Resumed” mean in the Canvas quiz log?

“Resumed” is the other half of the pair. Per Instructure, it “displays when the student has returned to the quiz.” In the API it is the page_focused event, and like page_blurred it carries no data.

Read the two lines together. Subtract the Stopped viewing timestamp from the Resumed timestamp and you have the length of the gap. That number is the only extra fact the pair gives. A Resumed line does not say where you came back from, and a long gap looks the same whether you answered a text message or searched the question.

Sample: stopped viewing and resumed in a quiz log

The sample uses Instructure's status names with made-up times. It is an illustration, not a real student's log, and the real Canvas screen looks different.

How to read the numbered lines:

1. The quiz page lost focus at 10:15:31. The line has no destination: it does not say which tab, site or app took the focus.
2. Focus came back 1 minute and 16 seconds later. That gap is the whole fact the pair records.
3. An answer 8 seconds after coming back. An instructor may read the timing, but the log cannot show what happened in the gap.
4. A second gap, 6 seconds long. We drew a short gap on purpose. Instructure documents no minimum time, and the example response in its own API reference shows a page_blurred and page_focused pair 6 seconds apart. That is example data, not a rule.

What is the 15 second rule on Canvas?

The “15 second rule” is the claim that Canvas writes “Stopped viewing” only after you have been away for more than 15 seconds. It is not in Instructure's documentation. We read the quiz log guide (updated 2026-09-04), the Moderate page guide for New Quizzes and the Quiz Submission Events API reference. None of them gives a time threshold.

The number comes from the Instructure Community forum. In a 2024 thread asking whether “Stopped viewing” can reveal cheating, an instructor quotes an earlier answer from a user the forum calls a “Community Champion”:

Three things to notice:

• It says “can occur”. It does not say the entry appears only after 15 seconds, and it does not say shorter gaps go unrecorded.
• It gives no source. The quote links no Instructure page for either number, and no Instructure page we found confirms them.
• The 30 second half is about inactivity, not leaving. If it were right, a student who sits still and thinks could get the same line. One entry is weak evidence.

Some sites say the rule comes from Instructure's instructor guide. It does not: the guide defines the entry by what the student does, not by how long. So do not plan around 15 seconds: if you leave the quiz page, assume the log can record it. More in our guide on how Canvas detects tab switching.

How a teacher reads a stopped viewing gap

In Classic Quizzes the instructor opens the log from Quizzes, then the quiz, Options, Show Student Quiz Results, the student's name and View Log. In New Quizzes it is the Moderate tab, then View Log. What they look at next is timing:

• The length of each gap. Resumed minus Stopped viewing.
• Where the gaps fall. A gap right before an answer reads differently from a gap after the last answer.
• How often. A pattern draws more attention than one line. In the same forum thread, an instructor asked about gaps on almost every other question of a 100-question exam.
• Autosave noise. For Fill-in-Multiple-Blanks, Matching, Multiple Answers and Multiple Dropdown questions, Instructure says the log is not accurate: autosave can show them as answered at the beginning of the quiz.

Instructure sets a limit on the whole exercise: “Quiz logs are not intended to validate academic integrity or identify cheating for a quiz.” The Canvas admin who answered the forum thread went further: they will not use these logs for academic integrity purposes at all.

If this line is on your own log and you know why, tell your instructor what happened and when. The timestamps let you match each line to a moment, such as a notification you clicked by mistake.

What the stopped viewing entry does not show

A Stopped viewing line is a status and a timestamp. Everything in this table is missing from it.

The Canvas admin in the forum thread made the reverse point: browser sidebar AI assistants can work “without a student ever leaving the quiz”, so they “wouldn't necessarily be flagged in the quiz log at all”. The log records leaving the page, not help that appears on it.

Proctoring tools are separate products; see our guide to what Canvas and proctoring tools can detect.

Canvas Quiz Solver: the answer is already on the quiz page

“Stopped viewing” is about leaving the page. Canvas Quiz Solver is a Chrome extension that reads the question on a Canvas quiz page and puts the answer right below the question, inside the Canvas quiz page. You do not open a second tab, you do not copy the question into ChatGPT, and you do not switch windows, so there is no page switch for the quiz log to record. A web page cannot list the Chrome extensions you have installed; extensions run in their own isolated world.

It works on Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes. You can start free, then it is $9.99 a month. AI answers can be wrong, so check them against your course material. It does not run inside LockDown Browser, and Honorlock can turn Chrome extensions off during a proctored exam.

Set it up before your quiz starts. The one-time consent screen, and the checkout page if you upgrade, open in a tab of their own. Support is at support@canvasquiz.com.

Sources for this guide, each with the date we last checked it:

• How do I view a quiz log for a student? (updated 2026-09-04), checked 2026-09-25
• How do I use the Moderate page in New Quizzes?, checked 2026-09-25
• Quiz Submission Events - Canvas LMS REST API Documentation, checked 2026-09-25
• Can “Stopped viewing the Canvas quiz-taking page” in the quiz log reveal cheating? (Instructure Community forum thread from 2024, not documentation; origin of the 15 and 30 second figures), checked 2026-09-25
• Document: visibilitychange event (MDN), checked 2026-09-25
• Page Visibility API (MDN), checked 2026-09-25
• Content scripts (Chrome for Developers), checked 2026-09-25
• Respondus LockDown Browser, checked 2026-09-25
• Honorlock extension permissions and functions, checked 2026-09-25

Common questions