How to download lecture videos from Canvas

There is no such thing as a Canvas lecture video. Canvas almost never stores the recording; it embeds a player belonging to one of six other systems. Which system decides everything about what you can do next: one click, one email to your lecturer, or nothing at all.

That is why the answers you find contradict each other. They are all correct, each for a different one of the six, and none of them says which. Work out which one you have first and the rest of this page is short.

First work out where the video actually lives

Six systems put a video in front of a Canvas student. They behave nothing alike:

• Canvas Studio - Instructure's own video tool, built into Canvas. Downloading is off by default and your lecturer switches it on per embed.
• Panopto - a separate lecture-capture system Canvas links out to. Also off by default, enabled per folder or per recording.
• Kaltura, often rebranded as My Media, Media Gallery or a local name like MiVideo. Whether there is a download button depends on which player the channel uses.
• A plain video file that somebody uploaded to the Files tab. This is an ordinary file and downloads like any other.
• Echo360, documented as EchoVideo. Another lecture-capture system Canvas links out to, and the only one here where downloading is on by default.
• An external link - YouTube, Vimeo, a Zoom cloud recording, or a link to a departmental server. Governed by that service, not by Canvas.

Only two of those six are ever affected by anything you do inside Canvas, which is the part that surprises people. Deleting your Canvas account does not delete a Panopto recording, and exporting your Canvas course does not export one either.

How to tell which one you are looking at

You do not need to ask anybody. Thirty seconds of looking will tell you:

1. Right-click the video and look for the player's name. Panopto and Kaltura both put their branding in the context menu or in a corner of the player. Studio does not brand itself at all, because inside Canvas it is not meant to look like a separate product.
2. Look at the module item. If clicking it opens a new tab, or a full-width page with its own toolbar, you have launched into an external system - almost always Panopto or Kaltura. If the video is sitting inline in a Canvas page among ordinary text, it is Studio or a file.
3. Check the course navigation menu on the left. A My Media or Media Gallery entry means Kaltura. A Panopto entry means Panopto. An Echo360 or EchoVideo entry means Echo360. A Studio entry means Studio.
4. Open the Files tab and search for the name. If the recording appears there as an .mp4, it is a plain file and you are done - skip to the last section.

Canvas Studio

Studio is the one most people are actually asking about, because it is Instructure's own and it comes with Canvas. It is also the one with the most misinformation around it, because there are two separate downloads and they are controlled by two different people.

The download inside the embedded player. When a lecturer drops a Studio video into a page, Instructure's own documentation is explicit that the download option is turned off by default and has to be enabled deliberately. It is a per-embed setting, so the same recording can be downloadable on one page and not on the next, and there are two separate toggles: one allowing the media download and one allowing the transcript download. That second one matters more than it sounds. It gets its own section below.

The download inside Studio itself. If your course navigation has a Studio entry, you can open the media there and download it from your own library. Two catches. Instructure describes this as "a legacy add-on that is now available with Canvas Plus and Canvas Next", so whether you have it at all depends on which Canvas package your institution bought. Not on you, and not on your lecturer. It is also strictly one file at a time. The accepted answer in Instructure's own community thread on this exact question says "Studio videos are downloaded easily from your Studio account. But this is one at a time."

Panopto

Panopto is the same story with different buttons. Downloads are off until somebody turns them on; Panopto calls it enabling podcast downloads, and it can be switched on for a whole folder, one subfolder, or a single recording. If your player's menu has no download entry, nobody has enabled it. Its absence is not a fault or a bug.

Because Panopto lives outside Canvas entirely, it also expires on its own schedule, which frequently runs ahead of your Canvas access. How to download Panopto lecture recordings covers the whole of it, including what to ask for and how to ask.

Kaltura, My Media and the branded ones

Kaltura is the one that confuses people most, because the download button is a property of the player rather than of the video. The University of Michigan's guide to its own Kaltura deployment puts it plainly: "The default Media Gallery player does not have the download button enabled", Turning it on means an instructor picking a different player, one literally named Enable Primary Video Download Button, either for the whole Media Gallery or for a single embedded item.

So on Kaltura, "there is no download button" almost never means the video is protected. It usually means nobody changed a default that most lecturers do not know exists. That is worth knowing before you write the email, because it makes the request a small one.

A number of institutions replaced Kaltura with Canvas Studio through 2024 and 2025. If yours did, old links may have been relinked to Studio automatically, so read the Studio section rather than this one.

Echo360, which defaults the other way

Echo360, documented as EchoVideo, is the same shape as Panopto. It sits outside Canvas and Canvas links into it. The recordings live in its library rather than in your course files. Everything on this page about telling Panopto apart from Studio applies to it too.

One thing about it is different. It is also the useful thing. Downloading is on by default. Echo360's own guide to the course setting says to toggle the Class Content downloads switch off to disable the ability to download content, and that it is enabled by default. So on Echo360 the question is not whether your lecturer switched downloading on. It is whether anybody switched it off.

Two more things are worth knowing before you go looking:

• It is one switch for the whole course. The same page says the setting "applies to all content across the course for students and teaching assistants", and an administrator can take the choice away from the instructor. So if one recording will not download, none of them will, and asking about that one recording is the wrong question.
• Interactive media is gated behind the polling questions. Echo360's guide to downloading from the class list states that students "are restricted from downloading ANY aspect of interactive media until they have viewed and responded to ALL of the polling questions. This includes transcripts". That is a wall with a door in it. Answer the polls and the download appears.

This app does not download Echo360, the same as Studio and Kaltura. It is on this page because its default runs the opposite way to everything else here, so a student assuming the Panopto rules apply goes looking for a permission that was never off.

A plain video file, and the one people miss

If the recording is an ordinary .mp4 in the course Files tab, none of the above applies. Select it and download it, or select everything and take the lot. The five ways to download your Canvas files covers that, and Download as Zip handles it with no software at all.

One almost nobody knows about. Media you recorded yourself through Canvas's own record button, such as a video discussion reply or a recorded submission, is filed separately from everything else. Instructure's community thread gives the path: Account, then Files, then My Files, then Uploaded Media. If you have spent an hour hunting for a video submission you made two semesters ago, that is where it went.

When the video is off, the transcript often is not

This is the most useful thing on this page and it is almost never mentioned. In both Studio and Panopto, the transcript is a separate permission from the video. Studio's embed settings list Allow media download and Allow transcript download as two different toggles, and lecturers who deliberately restrict the video routinely leave the transcript open, because captions exist for accessibility and turning them off is a decision nobody wants to defend.

So before concluding that a lecture is locked, open the player's options menu and look for a transcript or captions download. For revision that is frequently the better artefact anyway:

• It is searchable. A ninety-minute recording is not.
• It is a few hundred kilobytes against a few hundred megabytes.
• It is the format an AI study tool can actually read - see getting your Canvas files into NotebookLM, where a local video file is the one thing it will not accept.
• It still opens in ten years, on any machine, with no player and no login.

If there is no transcript at all, ask for one separately. Asking for captions lands very differently from asking for a download, and failing that you can always make your own from the audio. How to get a transcript of a Panopto lecture covers both routes, with measured timings for the second.

What you are actually allowed to do

Every route above is a supported feature that somebody chose to switch on or off. None of them is a way around anything. That is deliberate. Lecture recordings are the most restricted material in a typical course, for reasons that hold up. They contain other students' voices and questions. They are the lecturer's own performance. Any third-party clip inside one is usually licensed for the cohort and nobody else.

Which is why the honest first step is nearly always the email. "Could you enable downloads for this folder, or share the transcript?" is a small, specific request that costs your lecturer about a minute, and in the Kaltura case it is a request to change a default rather than to make an exception. Screen recorders and browser plugins that pull the stream regardless are a different thing entirely. Your institution's academic regulations will treat them that way.

What this app covers

Being specific about scope, because half of this page is about systems Canvas does not own. Canvas Downloader handles Panopto: it discovers the recordings a course links to and saves them as video, audio, a searchable transcript, or a shortcut back to the original. It does that for every course you select in one run.

It does not download Canvas Studio or Kaltura. Canvas hands out no file for either. The app sees a video with no download address and reports it as a stream rather than pretending it failed. So for those two the routes above are the routes, and what the app does instead is everything around the recording: the slides, the readings, the assignment briefs and the discussions.

Common questions

Why is there no download button on my lecture video?

Because downloading is off by default in both of the systems Canvas usually embeds. Instructure states that a Studio embed has the download option turned off unless the lecturer enables it, and Panopto downloads are disabled until somebody switches them on. A missing button almost always means a default nobody changed, not a deliberate lock.

How do I know whether my video is Canvas Studio, Panopto or Kaltura?

Look at the left-hand course navigation for a Studio, Panopto or My Media entry, and right-click the player to see whose branding appears. A video that opens in a new tab or on its own full-width page is almost always an external system; one sitting inline among ordinary Canvas text is Studio or a plain file.

Can I download a Canvas Studio video?

Only if it has been allowed. There are two separate routes. One is the download option on the embed, which a lecturer turns on per embed. The other is downloading from your own Studio library, which Instructure calls a legacy add-on available with Canvas Plus and Canvas Next, so that route depends on which Canvas package your institution bought. Studio media that came from YouTube or Vimeo can never be downloaded at all.

Does Canvas export or Download as Zip include lecture recordings?

No. Download as Zip takes the Files tab. It takes a video only if the video is an ordinary file sitting in that tab. Anything played through Studio, Panopto or Kaltura is not a Canvas file at all, so no Canvas export has ever contained it.

Can I download the transcript if the video is blocked?

Often, yes. Worth checking. The transcript is a separate permission from the video in both Studio and Panopto, and lecturers who restrict the recording frequently leave captions open because they exist for accessibility. Open the player's options menu and look for a transcript or captions download.

Where did my own recorded video submission go?

Media you recorded through Canvas's own record button is filed under Account, then Files, then My Files, then Uploaded Media - separately from both your course files and your submissions. Instructure's community thread on downloading course media gives that path.

Is it against the rules to record the lecture player with a screen recorder?

Usually. It is the one route on this page that is not a supported feature. Recordings contain other students, the lecturer's own delivery, and often third-party material licensed only for the cohort. Most institutions treat capturing them outside the provided tools as a disciplinary matter. Ask for the download or the transcript instead.

Can Canvas Downloader get my lecture videos?

It downloads Panopto recordings, as video, audio or a searchable transcript, for every course you select. It does not download Canvas Studio or Kaltura, because Canvas provides no file for either - for those the routes on this page are the routes.