EarlyARC app icon

Catch struggling students
early.

EarlyARC reads your Canvas courses and tells you which students need attention — and says, in plain language, exactly why.

Download for Mac How it works

macOS 14 or later  ·  Free  ·  Read-only & private

What it does

The students who need you, first.

Pick a course and EarlyARC shows the roster worst-first — with the evidence beside every flag, not a mystery score.

Every flag says why

Missing work, a slipping grade, going quiet — each reason is spelled out in plain language. No black box to second-guess.

Missing work that counts

Weighted by its share of the final grade, so 18% of the grade reads differently from a missed practice quiz.

Judged against the class

Inactivity and time-in-course are measured against classmates, not the calendar — so a quiet holiday doesn't flag everyone.

Message in your words

Copy a ready-to-send note built from your own templates. EarlyARC fills in the specifics; the voice stays yours.

One click into Canvas

Every name, assignment, and score links straight to the right page in Canvas, because acting on it still happens there.

Read-only by design

EarlyARC can only ever read. There is no code path that changes a course, a grade, or a student.

Widgets on your desktop

The current quarter's counts at a glance — per course, tappable into the app. Counts only, never names, even on a shared screen.

Updates itself

Signed, notarized updates arrive in-app, and every release's notes live in Help ▸ What's New.

Getting started

Connected in a minute.

No account to create. No server to trust. Just your Canvas and your Mac.

1

Connect to Canvas

Paste a personal access token you generate in Canvas. It is stored in your Mac's Keychain and only ever used to read.

2

Open a course

Your courses appear grouped by term. Click one to see its roster, or click a whole term to combine every flagged student.

3

See who needs a nudge

The students worth a look rise to the top, each with a plain reason. Reach out in a click, and EarlyARC remembers you did.

Screenshots

See it for yourself.

Light and Dark Mode throughout — these pictures follow the mode you're reading in. None of the data shown is real: every student, course, grade, and date is invented by the app's built-in sample mode.

The EarlyARC roster for a sample course of twelve students, listed worst-first. Two are At Risk, one is Concern, one is Watch, and each flag is explained in plain language: missing assignments named and linked with their share of the grade, current score against the passing mark, inactivity, and time in course.
The roster: worst-first, every flag explained, every name and assignment one click from Canvas.
A whole term combined into one list: seven students needing attention across two courses, each row naming its course beside the student and the evidence.
Click a term instead of a course, and every flagged student across the quarter lands in one list.
Message settings with three editable templates — Email, Short Message, and Referral Summary — and the list of placeholders EarlyARC fills in per student, such as first name, course, score, and the missing assignments.
Your templates, your voice — EarlyARC fills in the specifics per student.
Privacy settings spelling out what is kept on this Mac — the access token in the Keychain, your settings, your message templates, and an optional note of who you have written to — and what is never kept: student records and identifying logs.
The privacy pane says exactly what is kept, and what never is.

Captured from EarlyARC's built-in sample data with no Canvas account connected — the students, courses, grades, and dates are fictional, and no real student record was involved in any way.

Accessibility

Readable by design.

Built from native macOS controls, tested with the assistive tech teachers actually use.

Scales to 200%

The whole window grows from 80% to 200% — a slider in Settings, or ⌘+ and ⌘− like everywhere else.

VoiceOver, properly

Every control names itself with its units, evidence reads as sentences, and every link in a row is individually reachable.

Never color alone

Risk levels are words, not just colors. Dark Mode, system contrast, and system fonts throughout.

Privacy first

Student data never leaves your Mac.

EarlyARC is built for people who take FERPA seriously. It reads from Canvas, draws the screen, and forgets — there is no cloud, no account, and no analytics.

  • Rosters are held in memory and gone when you quit — no cache, no database of student work.
  • Your access token lives in the macOS Keychain, never in a file or a log.
  • The only server it contacts is your own Canvas. No analytics, no telemetry.
  • Signed and notarized by Apple, and sandboxed.

EarlyARC displays identifiable student records, so your institution's rules govern how you use it. Keeping the data on your Mac is not the same as having permission to view it.

Download

Try it with your own courses.

Free, notarized, and ready in a minute.

EarlyARC app icon
Download EarlyARC 1.3
macOS 14+ 1.6 MB · disk image Notarized by Apple

Questions, ideas, or something not working? Email Bruce — EarlyARC is built by one instructor, and hearing from another is the best part.