The archaeology of great writing
Draftback lets you play back the revision history of any Google Doc you can edit. It's like going back in time to look over your own shoulder as you write.
PRIVACY POLICY
I designed the extension to be as careful as possible about user privacy. No data is collected by me. User data is stored locally on the user's computer and it is only stored/collected there so that future replays of an already-replayed document will go faster.
It's possible that Google itself collects some user data on every one of its extensions, in which case Draftback wouldn't be an exception.
OTHER NOTES
- With Draftback, your data is kept entirely private. Draftback was purposely designed so that you could play back your own docs without having to share them with a third party. This is -your- data; Draftback just lets you see it in a new way.
- Draftback only needs access to docs.google.com to get the revision data for playback—but that data never leaves your own browser.
- Draftback has been tested with large documents, but you may run into trouble with REALLY large docs. If that happens, shoot me a note ([email protected]) and I'll try to get to the bottom of it.
Latest reviews
- (2023-10-23) Oliver Blenniss: Kinda mid because it keeps spinning, would get something else tbh.
- (2023-03-30) Caine Marlette: This was a lifesaver! I am in high school in an AP class and today I got accused of using ChatGPT to write an essay. I have never written a review for an app before, but I absolutely loved this, especially how I can use it for documents I have already written. I used this to prove my innocence then recommended this software to my teacher. I know there are probably other resources like this one and to be honest it was a little confusing with the "embed"-ing, but this was the first one I saw, and it absolutely save my buttocks.
- (2023-03-17) Spocckce Delton: Very outdated, hasnt been updated in a year, plus its still using that same old 2015-2016 layout which is pretty boring and it sucks how its not even using the same layout as the 2023 layout for google docs.
- (2022-09-22) Cindy Bahl (Cindy): FAIL. Does not work. At all. I tried everything. It is useless.
- (2021-04-06) Luis A. Socías Contreras: EXCELENT I COULD RECOVER LOST WORK THANK YOU!!!!
- (2021-01-29) JORDI BARDAJI CUSO: It is a very useful extension. It is very convenient for teachers to discover plagiarism. I would love the same extension for sheets.google. Thank you so much, it’s wonderful.
- (2020-09-02) Yuna K: Helpful for a writer hoping to analyze their own writing habit and style It'd be nice if we can manage the Extraction for Embed, such as deleting them at will whenever we want, or the ability to maintain a list of where the embedded pieces are shared.
- (2020-04-12) Zachary Matthews (Zack): I decided to test this with a paper I wrote awhile back, and while it do show the typing and edit history, it struggled to keep track of everything. At times it would put words places that they are not in reality, miss some deletes, and not put in all of the paragraph enters. As a result, the end result according to the program is a mess from what it was originally. And an additional problem is that it doesn't capture any of the formatting. This is a cool product, I just wish it better matched the original document in the end.
- (2019-08-15) Boris Verkhovskiy: It doesn't actually work, the text is very mangled, and at the end of the replay the doc is missing parts and doesn't look anything what the real doc does (although in the little preview window it looks much better) but still very cool
- (2019-05-22) Chad Mirus: Stopped working with Google Docs update.
- (2019-03-12) 12 34: It's like a visualizer for a git log in drive. For docs. Sort of. It's useful.
- (2019-01-13) Susan vanDruten: I could get it to work for a short doc, but not with one with 2000 revisions. The Chrome developer says "/static/document/client/js/66165487-client_js_prod_kix_app.js:760 [Deprecation] chrome.loadTimes() is deprecated, instead use standardized API: nextHopProtocol in Navigation Timing 2. https://www.chromestatus.com/features/5637885046816768." But I don't know what that means. I'm on a Mac.
- (2018-12-04) Michael A.: Unfortunately it doesn't render bulleted lists or tables, so documents that include those get a bit messy. If that can be fixed, then it´s a great app!
- (2018-03-07) Даниил Ярушин: Кнопка Draftback появляется только при создании новых документов(для существующих документов не появляется). Когда добавляю текст в документ и нажимаю на кнопку Draftback, затем -просмотр ревизий - мне отображается пустая страница с плеером, как ни управляй плеером - все равно пустая страница.
- (2018-02-24) Asher Friedman: This is a very interesting way to analyze one's writing style. I wish there was a way to export the data collected or save the produced graphs somewhere so I can put it in a presentation.
- (2018-02-07) bardcan: Just great. Any chance of their being a Google Sheets version?
- (2017-11-28) David Baker: Cool project man! 🤩
- (2017-11-27) Anthony Egbers: As a teacher I find this helpful. Especially for checking the writing process.
- (2017-11-22) Sebastian Lundgren: Nice app
- (2017-11-16) Addison Maerz: Seems to be missing some information at the end of the playback. The final product that draftback shows does not match the Google Doc itself.
- (2017-11-01) Holly Beth Veith: This is amazing for teachers!!!!! Teachers can quickly see if a student cuts and pastes. They can also use it to show students their progress on writing assignments. "Look where you started and how far you have come!"
- (2017-07-18) Daniel VandeBunte: The idea is great and I had no trouble getting it to do what it says it will do. It does not show tables in Docs. I.e. the finished product is not the end result of what you see after using the extension. One serious issue I have with the extension is that sometimes things are deleted for a reason. This gives OTHER people the ability to see what you deleted in a shared Doc. Very big-brother. So watch what you type all the time if the doc is shared.
- (2017-01-30) Brian L: I really like the statistics page. One feature I would like to see is the ability to see the stats of each indiviudal user on a shared document. Also, a lot of the text I see being typed in Draftback is jumbled up. For example, some paragraphs may be mashed together or something on another page (e.g. works cited) appears somewhere in the introduction. I assume that this might be affected by the suggestions feature in google docs.
- (2017-01-30) Christian Rodriguez: Awesome! I just wish it rendered some formatting changes as well (specifically numerical and bulleted lists!)
- (2017-01-16) Ben Siraphob: The wheel keeps spinning. It doesn't work, at least on Mac anyway.
- (2017-01-16) James Buch: So I got this for my chromebook and it worked absolutely fine. However when I got it for my mac it was just the spinning wheel people were talking about. Help?
- (2017-01-13) Victor Cheng: OMG!!!! As both an English teacher and a foreign language teacher, this is a god-send for seeing whether students are writing or copying and pasting! I can speed up or slow down watching my students type and has a slider for all the revisions! I love now how you can also get a video excerpt of the drafting process!
- (2016-11-21) Richard Hsu: Doesn't work =( It would have been awesome if it did work...
- (2016-11-03) Allison Dotson: Concept is great. Currently the wheel just spins with no actual progress.
- (2016-10-06) Paul Malatesta: just spun and did nothing for me.
- (2016-09-21) Roger Powell: Great extension and a very useful learning tool about one's writing process.
- (2016-09-15) Charley Butcher: Not sure yet as the wheel just keeps spinning and no playing of the revisions.
- (2016-08-26) Jennifer Fielden: I do think this is a very cool extension, however I wish it was available for Google Sheets and other Google Apps. I need to see who did what first in a Google sheet, and some of them made revisions within a minute of each other. Google does not specify which came first. So during this contest to see who could find and record the most keyboard shortcuts, I cannot tell who gets credit the ones that were recorded twice...since only one student gets to use each keyboard shortcut.