15 ideas for buzz-worthy apps that Canva users want

At Canva, we're always talking to our users and trying to understand what they want, but it's not always possible to deliver those features in the core product. This is why we launched the Apps SDK, Apps Marketplace⁠(opens in a new tab or window), and Innovation Fund:

To empower and incentivize third-party developers to fill these gaps.

But while we love seeing what ideas developers come up with, it's not always easy to figure out what to build.

Fortunately, our research has highlighted 15 features that Canva users want and that could be developed with the Apps SDK. And while we can't guarantee success, we're confident that these ideas provide a strong foundation for success.

Happy building!

An app that applies motion to still photography or seamlessly blends videos together to create engaging social media content. Allow users to select which parts of the image will move and add animations. Create video collages where the animated photos or videos stitch together in a consistent way.

An app that transforms an image into a different style, such as a headshot into an avatar or a photo into a painting.

An app that "understands" the content of an image and applies transformations that match the aesthetic of the image. For example, an app that accepts a photo of a person and allows the user to change that person's hair style.

This is a category of apps, rather than a single idea, but that's because our users love manipulating image colors in all sorts of ways. An example is an app "colorizes" a black-and-white image. Or an app that only changes the background of an image to black and white, leaving the focal point to "pop" in full color.

An app that adds a horizontal or vertical slant to an image, with a slider or number input that controls the degree of skewing.

An app that allows you to choose where to crop the image, enabling you to create more crop shapes, like circles, or crop off corners to better fit into the design.

An app that allows the user to draw a custom shape and then add that shape to their design. (The actual drawing would have to take place within the app's iframe.)

An app that exposes more varieties of shapes that can act as "drop targets", allowing users to fill those shapes with images or videos. Enable users to select or draw their own frame shape.

Canva calls this feature "frames" and it's similar to "masking" found in other software.

An app that generates a logo based on the user's input and selections. We're imagining something that has the flow of the Character Builder⁠(opens in a new tab or window) app, but for logos.

An app that lets the user enter multiple URLs and, in a single click, generate separate QR codes for each of the URLs.

Enable users to enter a line of text and bend it to a certain angle at a certain point in the text line, allowing them to place the text in corners or around images more easily.

An app that create text that contains subscript or superscript characters (or convert existing text). This is a popular request within the education sector.

An app that proofreads text, helping users to improve their writing style, grammar, and spelling.

An app that adds arranges a block of text into multiple columns. This text could be entered by the user in the app's iframe or read from the user's current selection.

An app that provides additional effects for users to apply to their text. Canva already has a number of built-in text effects, but our users are always hungry for more. Think of effects like distressed, ombre, texture, wave, 3D, broken, or melting.