How Answerly AI Works: The Complete Guide

This is the full walkthrough — every tool, exactly which question types are handled automatically, which ones aren't, and how to set the whole thing up. It includes an honest list of limitations, because knowing what a tool can't do is what stops you being surprised in the middle of a quiz.

1. What it actually is

Answerly AI is a Chrome extension that runs on Canvas quiz pages. It reads the question that's already on your screen, sends it to an AI model, and returns the answer together with the reasoning behind it — then selects the matching option for you.

The design goal is that nothing leaves the page. Most alternatives make you copy a question into another tab, which is slow and loses formatting. Answerly reads the question in place, which is why it can handle formats that don't survive copy-paste, like matching grids and multi-blank sentences.

Two things worth being clear about up front. It is Canvas-specific — the solver does not run on Blackboard, Moodle, or anything else. And it is a study tool: how you use it on graded work is governed by your institution's academic integrity policy, and that's your call to make.

2. Setup, step by step

1. Install from the Chrome Web StoreWorks in Chrome and any Chromium browser — Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi. Edge shows a one-time prompt to allow extensions from other stores; accept it and everything works normally.
2. Pin the extensionClick the puzzle-piece icon in your toolbar and pin Answerly AI. You'll be opening it often enough that hunting through the menu gets old.
3. Activate your codeOpen the extension and paste the activation code from your email. If it isn't there, check your spam folder — activation emails end up there more often than they should. This links the extension to your subscription.
4. Open a Canvas quizThe tools stay greyed out until the extension detects a Canvas page. If you see "Navigate to a Canvas quiz or assignment to use these tools," you're not on one yet — that message is the extension working correctly, not an error.
5. Turn on the tool you wantQuiz Solver for standard questions, Screenshot Tool for everything else. They're independent, and you can run both at once.

3. The Quiz Solver

Click Activate Quiz Solver and the extension scans the page, placing a small button on every question it can read.

Click that button and three things happen: the question and its options are read from the page, sent to the AI, and the response comes back as a card showing the answer and the reasoning. The matching option is selected automatically.

How it identifies question types

This is the part that determines what works, so it's worth understanding. The solver doesn't rely on Canvas's internal labels — it reads the actual form controls on the page:

• Radio buttons or checkboxes → multiple choice or multiple answer.
• Two or more dropdowns sharing the same option list → a matching question, solved as one unit so answers stay consistent across rows.
• Dropdowns with different options → independent dropdowns, solved separately.
• Text inputs with no choices → fill-in-the-blank. Multiple inputs means a multi-blank question, and the answer is split across them.
• None of the above → nothing the solver can fill, so it points you to the Screenshot Tool.

Reading the markup rather than Canvas's labels is what lets the same code work across both Canvas quiz engines, since Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes produce quite different page structures.

Why the reasoning matters

The card shows why the answer is right, not just what it is. That isn't decoration. An unexplained answer is unverifiable — you have no way to tell a well-reasoned answer from a confident mistake. The reasoning gives you something to check against your own thinking, and where the two diverge is precisely the concept you were missing.

4. Which question types work

The honest table. "Solver" means filled automatically; "Screenshot" means use the Screenshot Tool instead.

Accurate as of version 1.3.0, September 2026.

On a question it can't fill, the extension tells you rather than failing silently — a small notice naming the question type and pointing to the Screenshot Tool. In stealth mode it's a dim notification that fades after five seconds, or sooner if you dismiss it.

5. The Screenshot Tool

This is the universal fallback, and it's what makes the coverage gaps above manageable rather than blocking.

Activate it, and a fullscreen overlay appears. Drag a box around any part of the page — a diagram, an essay prompt, a chemical structure, a drag-and-drop question the solver can't touch — and the AI reads the image and answers it.

The context box

The capture panel has an optional context box. Its job is to tell the AI which question to answer when your capture contains more than one — which happens often, since quiz pages are dense and a drag box rarely isolates a single question cleanly.

Type a few words from the question you want, or its number:

• "question 4" — when several numbered questions are in the capture.
• "the one about mitosis" — a distinguishing phrase from the question you mean.
• "the bottom question" — positional, when two are stacked in the shot.

Leave it empty and the AI answers whatever it judges to be the main question in the image, which is usually right for a tight capture around one question. It's most worth using when your box caught a neighbour, or when a passage sits above several questions about it.

One thing it is not: a place for output instructions. Typing something like "explain in one line" won't change the answer's format — the text is used to identify the question, so an instruction there just confuses which question you meant. Capture tightly and leave the box empty when there's only one question in frame.

Because it works on pixels rather than page structure, the Screenshot Tool is immune to markup changes. When Canvas ships an update that breaks structural parsing, this still works.

6. Solve All

Solve All Questions runs the solver across every question on the page in one action, staggering the requests rather than firing them simultaneously.

It skips anything already answered, so you can work through a quiz manually and use Solve All to fill the remainder. Questions it can't handle are left untouched rather than filled with a guess.

A practical note: on a quiz set to one-question-at-a-time, Solve All only sees the question currently on screen, because the others aren't in the page yet. That's a Canvas behavior, not a bug.

7. Uploading your notes as context

The most underused feature, and the one that most improves answer quality.

You can upload a PDF, image, or text file up to 7 MB — lecture slides, a study guide, a textbook chapter. The AI then uses it as reference material when answering, so responses reflect your course rather than general knowledge.

This matters where courses define terms in specific ways. A general model answers from the most common usage; with your slides loaded, it answers from your instructor's usage. It applies to both the Quiz Solver and Screenshot Tool, and stays active until you remove it — so load your material at the start of a study session and forget about it.

8. Stealth modes

Two independent toggles that change how visible the extension is on screen. Neither changes what it can answer.

Quiz Stealth

Hides the button on each question. Click where it would normally sit and the answer is fetched and selected silently — nothing appears on screen.

Screenshot Stealth

Places an invisible capture button on each question that reveals itself on hover. Click it, drag your box, and the answer fills in with no visible panel.

These are display preferences. If you prefer a clean page, or you're screen-sharing during a study session, they keep the interface out of the way.

9. Privacy Guard

A separate toggle that blocks activity logging while you work: tab-switch detection, page-view tracking, and quiz event logging. Unlike the solver, it works across Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, and other LMS platforms.

One important detail: Privacy Guard installs its protections as the page loads, so enable it before opening the quiz. If you turn it on while a quiz is already open, refresh the page. Enabling it mid-quiz without refreshing means the page's existing tracking is already running.

For context on what Canvas records and how much it actually means, see what your instructor can actually see — the short version is that it's considerably less than most students assume.

10. Customization

The Customize page controls how the interface looks:

• Presets — complete themes in one click.
• Colors — button, card background, border, answer text, and hint text individually.
• Card opacity — a slider from fully visible to fully invisible, for something between normal and stealth.
• Stealth keybind — a keyboard shortcut instead of clicking.
• Live preview — changes render immediately, so you're not guessing.

11. Limits, and what it can't do

Daily limits

The Pro plan includes 150 Quiz Solver solves and 150 Screenshot solves per day, counted separately and reset at midnight UTC. Remaining counts are shown in the popup. For normal coursework these are generous — a 40-question exam uses roughly a quarter of one bucket.

What it genuinely can't do

Stated plainly:

• Other platforms. The solver is Canvas-only. Blackboard, Moodle, D2L, Schoology — no. Privacy Guard is the sole exception.
• Drag-and-drop interactions. It won't physically drag items into buckets or reorder a sequence. The Screenshot Tool tells you the correct arrangement; you perform it.
• Hot Spot clicks. Same — it can tell you which region, but won't click it.
• Write your essay into the box. The Screenshot Tool answers essay prompts, but composing and submitting is yours.
• Guarantee correctness. It's an AI model. It's strong on well-formed questions and can be wrong — most often on ambiguous phrasing, questions relying on a specific lecture's framing, or images that are genuinely unclear. This is exactly why the reasoning is shown: so you can check it.
• Work offline. Answers are generated server-side and require a connection.
• Bypass proctoring software. If your course uses a lockdown browser or proctoring tool, that's a separate system and outside what this does.

12. Troubleshooting

Buttons don't appear on questions

Check the extension shows the Canvas page as detected, confirm the Quiz Solver toggle is on, then refresh. On a slow-loading quiz the page may not have finished rendering when the extension scanned it.

"Network error"

Usually a brief connection problem — wait a moment and click again. If it persists across several minutes, the backend may be mid-deploy; it resolves on its own.

Privacy Guard doesn't seem to be working

Refresh the page. It applies its protections at page load, so enabling it on an already-open quiz has no effect until you reload.

A question is answered but the option isn't selected

Occasionally happens when Canvas renders options in an unusual way. The answer is still shown in the card — select it manually. If it recurs on a specific question type, that's worth reporting through the in-extension support chat.

Daily limit reached

Limits reset at midnight UTC. Note that Quiz Solver and Screenshot counts are separate, so exhausting one leaves the other available.