Canva Extend 2024, a recap

Over the past year since we launched the Canva Apps SDK, we've seen incredible growth and engagement from our community. In just 15 months, we've surpassed 300 apps and over 1 billion app uses. The Canva community loves the apps you all are building, some even using them 4 or 5 times a day. Our users are enthusiastic for apps, and that's thanks to your hard work. What you've accomplished has inspired us to make this years' launches at Canva Extend - the premier Canva developer event - even bigger and better than before.

To launch year 2 of the Canva Developers Platform, we're excited to announce new features that enhance your experience and expand our offering:

1. Premium Apps Program: we know more monetization is something you all are always asking about. We're excited to enable revenue sharing with Canva through our Premium Apps Program. Selected apps can mark features, or their whole app, as premium, available to Canva Pro, Teams, and Enterprise as part of their subscription. Each time they use your app, you'll earn! And don't worry, Canva Free users can still access your non-premium features for free.

2. Apps in new UI entry points: we've seen massive adoption of apps after successfully trialing and expanding app access to new areas across Canva this year. Some apps have seen an 800% boost since becoming more widely available in the Text tab and Photo Editing panel. So we're expanding the surfaces where apps are available, including enabling Apps in Docs.

   Apps have not been available in Canva Docs, but we're excited to be able to unlock access. Since Docs have different concepts of pages and backgrounds, some apps may require small changes to work as expected. Learn more about Apps running in docs, and make sure to review your app to ensure a great user experience in Docs.

3. Translation Services: did you know that Canva users work with Canva in 100 languages? Up until recently, your app was only available in English. Now, we'll translate your app into 8 key languages to help you reach over 80% of Canva users in their native language.

   All you have to do is use the new FormattedMessage component, and we'll be able to extract and translate all those strings.

4. Design Editing and Content Querying API Betas: we know you've been asking for this from day one, and we're excited to bring you new ways for apps to read and interact with text and design elements. In the past, you could add any element to a design, but only read select information from selected elements. Now you have the ability to read everything in a design, beyond the current page, using two new APIs.

   Launching first is our Content Querying API for Text. This enables you to read all the text on a page, including text inside elements like shapes and tables, and soon, the whole document.

   The Design Editing API allows you to read all the elements in a design, including their position, enabling you to do contextual element replacement or relocation.

   We're super excited to see the use cases these unlock. They are in beta, so please share your feedback to help us shape the future of these APIs.

5. Suspended State Apps: Gone are the days of losing users because they navigate away from a long running process, such as AI generation, and when returning to the tab or app, find they've lost all progress. Instead of ending app processes when a user navigates away, we now put your app in a suspended state, meaning when users return, they can pick up where they left off. And the best part is this is already 100% rolled out so you as a developer don't have to change a thing to start seeing this benefit 🤩

Canva Extend is a great time to meet our community, hear your feedback directly, and share your success stories. We were thrilled to have an amazing panelist of App Developers who shared their successes over the last year: Giancarlo from Pixel Tinkers, the team behind Typecraft⁠(opens in a new tab or window), Typegradient⁠(opens in a new tab or window), and more, Felix from Photomosh, the developer of Screen⁠(opens in a new tab or window), Color Mix⁠(opens in a new tab or window), and more, and Cecelia from Meta, with the Meta Design Check⁠(opens in a new tab or window) app.

It's also amazing to see our community share ideas with each other and the Canva team. The networking opportunities are unmatched. Some of our recent AI & Integrations Hackathon⁠(opens in a new tab or window) winners, including Canva Pack for Coda⁠(opens in a new tab or window) and VFonts by Typogram⁠(opens in a new tab or window), attended and shared their ideas with our community. It's moments like these, seeing our community meeting each other IRL and sharing ideas, that fuel the desire to find more opportunities to bring people together.

Spending time with all of you, from all across the globe, is what inspires us every day. We are committed to continuous improvement and innovation, driven by your needs and feedback. Thank you for being a part of our journey, and we look forward to seeing what we can achieve together in the coming year.

You can catch the full replay of Canva Extend, plus some exclusive online only content, in our YouTube playlist⁠(opens in a new tab or window).