Canvas Stopped Viewing Flag Explained

Short answer. "Stopped viewing the Canvas exam page" is the entry Canvas writes to your quiz log every time your browser tells it the quiz tab is no longer in focus. It can be triggered by tab switching, screen sleep, notifications, password manager popups, and many other harmless actions. The log records the timestamp and the duration. It does not record where you went.

If your log has this entry, you are not in trouble by default. Below is everything that triggers it and how professors actually interpret these entries.

What "stopped viewing" actually means

When you open a Canvas quiz, the page is running JavaScript that watches for two browser events:

• visibilitychange fires when the tab moves into or out of the visible state.
• blur fires when the page loses focus.

The moment either of these fires, Canvas saves "stopped viewing the Canvas exam page" with a timestamp. When the page becomes visible or focused again, Canvas saves "resumed viewing" with another timestamp. The difference between the two is how long the event lasted.

That is the entire mechanism. Canvas knows the page was not in focus. It does not know why.

Every action that triggers a stopped viewing event

Some of these surprise people because they do not feel like "leaving the page":

• Clicking on any other browser tab.
• Opening a new tab in the same window.
• Switching to a different application (Slack, Discord, Notes, Spotify).
• Clicking on a window on a second monitor.
• Letting the screen sleep.
• Pressing Cmd Tab or Alt Tab.
• Pressing Cmd Space (Spotlight on Mac).
• Pressing the Windows key.
• A system notification popup taking focus.
• A password manager autofill prompt firing.
• Operating system alerts (low battery, software update prompts).
• Calendar reminders that pop to front.
• AirDrop accept dialogs.
• USB device connect dialogs in some browsers.
• Browser extension prompts (ad blocker warnings, translator popups).

The trigger is the page losing focus. Not what you did with that focus.

Actions that do not trigger a stopped viewing event

• Typing in an answer field.
• Scrolling.
• Clicking from one field to another on the same page.
• Resizing the window without losing focus.
• Pressing arrow keys or Tab to navigate within the page.
• Using a Chrome extension that operates inside the Canvas page (modifying form fields, clicking radios). These look identical to a student typing.

This is why inline tools like ExamClutch do not generate stopped viewing events. They never move focus away.

How long is "long enough" to matter

There is no official threshold. The log records every focus loss with full precision. A 2 second blip and a 5 minute gap both appear.

Professors interpret duration in context:

• Under 5 seconds. Almost always ignored. Looks like a notification or a stray keypress.
• 5 to 30 seconds. Usually ignored, especially on a long quiz with many events.
• 30 seconds to 2 minutes. May get attention if the timing lines up with a question that was correctly answered immediately after.
• 2 minutes and longer. Hard to explain away if it sits inside a single hard question.

These are heuristics, not rules. A 90 second gap right before a difficult question changes answer from wrong to right looks more suspicious than a 90 second gap during the warmup multiple choice questions.

What professors think when they see a stopped viewing event

The smarter ones know the event has many harmless causes. A short focus loss in isolation is almost never enough to act on. What concerns them is a pattern:

• Long stopped viewing gaps inside the questions you got right.
• Repeated stopped viewing events on the same harder questions.
• Stopped viewing events that line up with a known answer change.
• Submission speed inconsistent with the time spent on screen.

A single stopped viewing event is a data point. A pattern is evidence.

Stopped viewing on Canvas New Quizzes

New Quizzes uses a different rendering layer than Classic Quizzes (the LTI iframe), but the focus event tracking works the same way. The entries appear in the same View Log interface for instructors. You should expect the same behavior on both.

Can I see my own stopped viewing log

No. Students cannot view the Canvas quiz log. Only instructors have access. If you want to know what triggered an entry, you can either:

• Ask your professor to share the relevant entries during a meeting.
• Take a low stakes practice quiz and ask a TA to show you the log afterward.

What to do if you see a flag you did not cause

Read our walkthrough on unexplained Canvas log flags. Short version: do not panic, recreate the moment, document the cause if you can, and reply calmly to your professor.

Quick reference

Trigger	Recorded as stopped viewing
Tab switch in same window	Yes
App switch (Slack, Discord)	Yes
Screen sleep	Yes
Cmd Tab / Alt Tab	Yes
Notification popup	Yes
Password manager popup	Yes
Typing in the answer field	No
Scrolling	No
Inline extension fills the answer	No
Right click context menu	Usually no

FAQ

Does the log show a stopped viewing event if I take a phone call? Only if the call causes your screen to sleep, or you switch to a phone app on your laptop. A regular phone call on your phone does not affect Canvas.

What if my Wi-Fi drops? Connectivity loss does not create a stopped viewing event. The page is still in focus from the browser's point of view. Some other quiz log events may not transmit until the connection returns.

Does refreshing the page count as stopped viewing? Refreshing fires its own set of events. It is not specifically a stopped viewing event but it is recorded and can look strange in a log. Avoid refreshing during a quiz.

Will I get a notification if I trigger a flag? No. The log updates silently. Students never get a real time alert from Canvas about anything in their log.

Can a Chrome extension prevent the stopped viewing event from firing? Not the event itself. The event is part of how browsers and websites communicate. The only way to keep the log clean is to not lose focus on the Canvas tab. Tools that work inside the Canvas page do not require you to lose focus.

Related reading

• Canvas Quiz Logs Explained
• Can Canvas See Other Tabs?
• Canvas Said I Left the Screen When I Did Not
• Does Canvas Detect Cheating?
• Open Note Exams on Canvas