How to Find Your Favorited Designs on Canva

Canva makes it easy to create hundreds of designs — but finding the ones you've marked as favorites can feel surprisingly elusive if you don't know where to look. Whether you're trying to pull up a saved template, a design you starred weeks ago, or a folder you organized around a specific project, Canva's interface has a few specific paths you need to know.

What "Favoriting" Actually Means in Canva

Canva uses the term "Starred" rather than "favorited" for designs you've personally marked. When you star a design from your homepage or within a project, Canva saves a reference to it in a dedicated section — it doesn't move the file, it just creates a quick-access bookmark.

There's an important distinction here:

• Starred designs — files you've manually starred from your own workspace
• Favorite templates — templates you've saved while browsing Canva's template library
• Shared designs — designs others have shared with you that you may have pinned or saved

Each of these lives in a slightly different location, which is a common source of confusion.

How to Find Starred Designs on Canva (Desktop)

On the Canva web app (canva.com):

1. Log into your Canva account
2. Look at the left-hand sidebar on the homepage
3. Select "Starred" from the navigation menu

If you don't see "Starred" immediately, it may be nested under a "Projects" section or visible only after scrolling the sidebar. Canva periodically adjusts its navigation layout, so the exact position can shift depending on when your account was created or which interface version you're on.

Once inside Starred, you'll see a grid of all designs you've personally marked. You can sort these by last modified, alphabetically, or by date created using the sort controls at the top right.

Starring a Design (If You Haven't Already)

To star any design from your homepage:

• Hover over the design thumbnail
• Click the three-dot menu (⋯) that appears
• Select "Star" or "Add to Starred"

You can also star a design from inside the editor by going to File → Star this design.

How to Find Saved Templates in Canva 🔖

Saving a template is different from starring a design. When you browse Canva's template library and click the heart icon on a template, it gets saved to your "Saved templates" section.

To access these:

1. From the Canva homepage, click "Templates" in the left sidebar
2. Scroll to the top of the templates page
3. Look for a "Saved" or "Your saved templates" tab near the top of the screen

Alternatively, when you're inside a new design and browsing templates from the left panel, a "Saved" tab typically appears alongside the search results, letting you pull in templates you've hearted previously.

Finding Favorites on the Canva Mobile App

The mobile experience follows a slightly different layout:

1. Open the Canva app on iOS or Android
2. Tap the "Projects" tab at the bottom of the screen
3. Look for a "Starred" folder among your project folders

On mobile, the Starred section may appear as a folder icon with a star rather than a labeled text link. If you're using an older version of the app, the navigation may differ — keeping the app updated generally ensures the layout matches current documentation.

Organizing Beyond Stars: Folders and Brand Kits

Stars are a quick-access tool, but they aren't the only way to organize designs you want to return to. Canva folders let you group designs by project, client, content type, or whatever system works for you — and folders are often more reliable for long-term organization than the Starred list alone.

Canva Pro and Teams accounts also have access to Brand Kit and shared team folders, which add another layer of organization — but the Starred and Saved features are available on free accounts as well.

Variables That Affect What You See

How your Starred and saved content appears depends on a few factors worth understanding:

• Account type — Free, Pro, and Teams accounts have slightly different sidebar layouts and folder permissions
• Platform — Web, desktop app, iOS, and Android each have their own navigation structure
• Interface version — Canva rolls out UI updates gradually, so two users on the same plan may see different sidebar arrangements temporarily
• Number of designs — With a large library, designs can get buried; Canva's search bar (top of homepage) supports filtering by type, which can help surface starred items faster

🔍 Using the search bar and typing a keyword from a design's name is often the fastest recovery method when you know roughly what you're looking for but can't locate it through navigation alone.

When Starred Designs Go Missing

If a design you starred no longer appears in your Starred section, a few things may have happened:

• The design was deleted (starred status disappears with the file)
• The design was moved to trash by a team member on a shared account
• A UI update changed where the section lives without removing the content — try scrolling or checking under Projects

In shared or Teams workspaces, permissions also play a role. If a design was shared with you and then unshared by the owner, it may disappear from your Starred list even if you didn't remove it yourself.

How straightforward the process feels ultimately depends on which version of Canva you're using, what account tier you're on, and how your workspace is currently organized — which means the path from here looks a little different for everyone.