Can You Submit Turnitin Assignments From a Phone? The Official Device Rules

Yes for students, with caveats. Turnitin's official system requirements say students can complete most primary tasks on phones 6.1 inches or larger (e.g. iPhone 16, Samsung Galaxy A16) and tablets 11 inches or larger (e.g. iPad, Samsung Galaxy S11): viewing assignment details, submitting assignments, opening Integrity Reports, and viewing feedback and grades. Instructor workflows are not supported on phones at all. And Turnitin inside a third-party LMS mobile app — Canvas, Moodle, or Blackboard's app — is officially unsupported: the document says to access the LMS from a supported web browser instead.

The system requirements page draws the line by role and screen size:

"Students can complete most primary tasks on phones (6.1 inches or larger) and tablets (11 inches or larger), including: Viewing assignment details / Submitting assignments / Opening Integrity Reports / Viewing feedback and grades."

"Instructor workflows are not supported on phones."

So the same device rule does not apply to both sides of the classroom. Submission and report viewing are student tasks and work on a large-enough phone. Marking, grading, rubric use, and feedback are instructor tasks — on a phone they are not supported, period.

The page also names the tablet tasks it does support for instructors: opening and reviewing Similarity Reports, navigating report layers and insights, adding annotations and comments, grading with rubrics, and leaving summary feedback — on tablets 11 inches or larger.

Turnitin is a web service, and the support rules are about browsers:

"We support the latest and one previous version of the following browsers: Chrome / Firefox (desktop only) / Safari / Microsoft Edge (desktop only)."

Two details matter for mobile users. Firefox and Edge carry "(desktop only)" in the official list — mobile Firefox and mobile Edge are not in the supported set. And for LMS mobile apps, the document is direct:

"Turnitin is not supported for use inside third-party LMS mobile apps. Turnitin does not officially support third-party LMS mobile apps. For the best experience, we recommend access via the LMS from a supported web browser."

If your university's Canvas or Moodle app opens Turnitin inside itself, you are outside the officially supported path. The supported route is the browser on your device — open the LMS in the mobile browser, then the Turnitin assignment.

Feedback Studio has two experiences, and the mobile rule differs between them. On the older classic Similarity Report, the document says:

"While the classic Feedback Studio Similarity Report may load in mobile browsers without issue, grading and feedback workflows are not optimized for smaller screens and are officially unsupported."

So a classic report may open on your phone, but any grading or feedback workflow inside it is officially unsupported on small screens. The recommendation for instructors and administrators is the same line: perform class and assignment management for the classic experience on a desktop or laptop browser.

The minimums are concrete: 6.1 inches for phones and 11 inches for tablets, with "make sure your browser is up to date" attached. The page also notes that interfaces work better in landscape orientation. For submission on a phone, that suggests rotating to landscape and updating the browser beforehand. It also warns that experience "may vary depending on the feature, device, browser, and screen size" — support for a flow is not a guarantee of a polished flow on every device.

One more boundary lives in the same page, and it is an EULA matter rather than a compatibility one:

"Running Turnitin services in a virtual environment (or in a way that circumvents security controls) is a violation of the End-User License Agreement. Turnitin services can't be run within virtualized environments or environments that require persistent network connections, including (but not limited to): VMWare / Parallels / Citrix Workspace / virtual disks."

If you normally run Windows in Parallels or VMware on a Mac and try to do your coursework there, the Turnitin part is against the license — not a browser setting you can fix. The compliant path is using a supported desktop browser on the host operating system, or your institution's supported setup.

Turnitin's system requirements tell you exactly what each device can do: students submit and view reports from phones 6.1 inches or larger and tablets 11 inches or larger; instructor grading workflows are not supported on phones; the classic interface's grading flows are not supported on small screens; third-party LMS mobile apps are officially unsupported — use the LMS in a supported browser; and virtual machines hosting Turnitin violate the EULA. Screen size, landscape orientation, and a current browser are the practical levers on your side. When a flow matters — a final submission, a report deadline — the official answer is a desktop or laptop in a supported browser.