How to get Brightspace (D2L) assignment reminders on your iPhone

Brightspace keeps due dates in its Calendar tool, but calendar feeds are switched off until you turn them on. Once they are, Brightspace gives you one private link for every course. Brightspace, made by D2L, is used by universities, colleges and school districts across North America and beyond.

Step 1: Find your Brightspace calendar link

1. Open Brightspace in a web browser, go to Calendar and click Settings.
2. Tick Enable Calendar Feeds, then Save.
3. Back in Calendar, click Subscribe and pick All Calendars and Tasks.
4. Copy the link.

The link looks something like webcal://yourschool.brightspace.com/d2l/le/calendar/feed/…. It’s private to you: anyone who has it can read your calendar, so don’t post it or share it.

Step 2: Get a reminder before every due date

1. Get Nudge from the App Store. It’s free.
2. Pick Brightspace from the list of school platforms. (Later on, it’s under Settings › School calendar, or tap “Paste my calendar link” on Home.)
3. Paste the link. Your dated work appears in one list, sorted by due date, and Pip starts watching.

You choose how early Pip speaks up: 1 day and 2 hours before a deadline, or 1 day, 3 hours and 1 hour before. Deadlines due together share one nudge, and nothing arrives overnight. Nudge rechecks your link whenever you open it or pull down to refresh, and if a teacher moves a date, it tells you what changed.

What comes through from Brightspace

Due dates and events from all your Brightspace courses when you choose All Calendars and Tasks. Picking a single course gives you only that course. Calendar feeds share due dates, not grades or whether you’ve submitted, so mark work done in Nudge after you hand it in. For anything that isn’t in the feed, type it into Nudge like a text: “essay draft thursday 9am”.

Other ways to see Brightspace due dates on your iPhone

The same link works in any calendar app that can subscribe to a calendar. That’s a good way to see your due dates, but it isn’t built to remind you of them:

• Apple Calendar: in the Calendar app, tap Calendars, then Add Calendar › Add Subscription Calendar, and paste the link. Subscribed calendars are read-only, so you can’t add your own alert to each assignment, and school feeds usually don’t include alerts of their own.
• Google Calendar: on a computer, click + next to Other calendars › From URL. Google checks subscribed links on its own schedule, so new or moved due dates can take many hours to appear.

Nudge reads the link for one job: deadlines. It lists them by due date, counts down to the next one, nudges you before each, flags anything that moved, and lets you mark work done.

Troubleshooting

Subscribe only shows one course.

Choose All Calendars and Tasks in the Subscribe dialog so every course comes along.

I don’t see Settings in Calendar.

Open the full Calendar tool, not the calendar widget on the homepage. Settings is on the Calendar page.

The link starts with webcal://.

That’s normal. Nudge accepts webcal:// and https:// links.

Questions

Still stuck? Email [email protected] and say which platform you use, but please don’t send the link itself. See also: what a school calendar feed is and how to keep it private.

Brightspace (D2L) is a trademark of its owner. Nudge is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Brightspace; it reads the standard calendar link Brightspace gives you.