About Storage Quotas
Every Penn Canvas site has a file storage quota. The default quota is 1GB for non-Wharton courses and 2GB for Wharton courses.
The following items count toward your site’s storage quota:
- Any file uploaded into the Files section or through the Rich Content Editor of a page, module, assignment, quiz, or announcement. Examples include PowerPoint slides, PDF files, Word documents, and images.
- The course card image that is visible on the Dashboard.
- All content imported from a Canvas Course Export Package (.imscc file type).
The following items do not count toward your site’s storage quota:
- Student work submissions.
- Files copied from a previous semester’s course to a new course.
- Files stored within a third-party integration tool (Panopto, Perusall, Gradescope, etc.).
- Group quotas (500MB limit). If your groups are creating large files, please reach out to your local support provider to find an alternative solution.
- User quotas (500MB limit). These items can include a user’s profile picture and any files they save in Canvas for their own use.
Managing Your Storage
There are two ways to check how much storage you are using in your course site:
- Go to Files and locate the storage percentage under the list of file folders.
- Go to Settings > Course Statistics > File Storage.
If your course is running low on storage space, the Canvas Support team may be able to increase your storage limit. However, course sites with increased storage limits may encounter errors if you attempt to copy content for future semesters, so we do not recommend this solution. Please consider the suggestions below before requesting an increase for individual sites.
Space-saving recommendations
- Share readings with students using Perusall or the library Course Reserves.
- Store large files in PennBox or Google Drive (SAS only), then generate sharing links and add them to Canvas.
- Host video content on a third-party platform such as Panopto or YouTube, or store them in a cloud storage platform such as PennBox, OneDrive, or Google Drive. Panopto integrates directly with Canvas via the Class Recordings section of your course, and videos from external sources can be embedded directly into Canvas pages with no impact on storage limits.
For assistance managing or migrating your files, please reach out to your Local Support Provider or the Canvas Support team.