Revision History: Writing Process Visibility for Google Docs & Slides
Extension Actions
CRX ID
dlepebghjlnddgihakmnpoiifjjpmomh
Status
- Extension status: Featured
- Extension status: In-App Purchases
- Live on Store
Description from extension meta
Built for teachers: See how students write, not just what they wrote. View the writing process in Google Docs & Slides.
Image from store
Description from store
Revision History helps 200k+ teachers see students' writing process in Google Docs and Slides - especially useful in the AI age. Track authentic writing development and guide meaningful revisions while ensuring academic integrity.
Key Features:
✍️ Complete Writing Timeline: Track editing sessions, time spent writing, and revision patterns
🎥 Video Replay: Watch documents being written from start to finish with large paste/deletion moments highlighted
📋 Copy/Paste Detection: See what content was pasted from external sources
🏫 Google Classroom Integration: Works seamlessly with submitted assignments, so long as they were written in Docs.
🔍 Enhanced Video Navigation: Important paste/deletion events now highlighted with icons for quick access
💡 Unusual Writing Pattern Detection: Identify atypical writing patterns that may benefit from additional guidance (these patterns are NOT evidence of any specific behavior and may have perfectly reasonable explanations)
📑 Multi-document tab detection: See writing analytics that occur within an individual Google document tab.
🔑 Google SSO
👥 User contribution breakdown in Video Replay
This version includes RH for Google Slides Beta release as well as Teacher Tools for Google Docs Beta (Writing Report Download & Docs Templates)
Perfect for writing instruction, formative assessment, and supporting authentic student work.
Privacy & compliance
We’re designed for with privacy in mind: Revision History collects ZERO document or student data collection. All revision analysis occurs locally. Contact us for details.
With 200k+ educators now using Revision History, we've introduced Plus subscriptions to unlock unlimited document analysis and fund ongoing support and improvements. Free tier includes analysis of 150 unique documents per month.
We never imagined so many educators would use our product. We're grateful, to say the least.
Works with any document created in Google Docs, including those submitted through Google Classroom.
Draftback, Originality.ai, Process Feedback, and Grammarly Authorship all work in Docs only. Revision History works in Docs & Slides -- and provides Summary Stats, Unusual Writing Flags, PDF Report Downloads, and much more.
Please email [email protected] with any questions.
Latest reviews
- Josh Donovan
- History teacher here. What a wonderful extension! In just a few minutes, I can reliably verify whether a student's work is their own. I caught a handful of students using AI and was able to understand how they used it. Perhaps more importantly, it gave me confidence that most of my students did their work honestly. This extension removes the awful guess work and allows me to focus on giving constructive feedback. Thank you so much!
- leo wei
- best thing ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Leeland Johnson
- This is a helpful tool. As a teacher, I can track students' writing. I can see when they copied and pasted, and what corrections they made on revisions. I highly recommend this tool.
- Brad Johnston
- Best tool that I have seen for combatting the crisis of students plagiarizing and using AI for assignments. Just today, I found 3 students who used it to either cut and paste an AI generated submission into their paper or cut and pasted a whole paragraph from another source with no attribution nor quotes. It makes it easy to trigger conversations with students about what happened in their writing process. We do a lot of one pagers on slides, that development is still a bit awkward but the work on documents is 100% game changer since it is so simple to use and is a great pointer to an issue that is difficult to police.
- Eric
- Does not work as intended and mistakes handmade for not handmade
- Julia Overly
- I had trouble with the extension working and emailed their info email. I was surprised to get a message from Daniel in minutes and he could see that I had signed up for the service for one account but was still logged into a different account so the accounts were mixed up. They consolidated them onto the one I wanted in minutes and all is better. Brief interruption but repaired so quickly and with really great customer service. Thanks!
- Julia Overly
- Signed up and paid and now it tells me my subscription doesn't work and there's no way to talk to anyone or get help. Looks like everyone is posting the same under review yet they don't seem to be changing anything. What a rip off. And ripping off teachers? Come on now.
- SHAWN LIDDICK
- HS Social Studies teacher here and this has been the best tool I've come across to help combat the AI/plagiarism epidemic! I love how it breaks down exactly how many times and exactly what was plagiarized, how much time a student spends working on a document is also very helpful, being able to get the PDF report of everything is brilliant, and the follow along feature was something I never expected. This is SO worth it.
- Byron Benter
- Simple and straightforward way to detect cheating. I especially like how they *explain* the method that they use to determine inconsistencies, so that I can make better decisions about student writing behavior.
- Laura Clarito
- Thank you for helping me have converstaion about AI use with my students!
- Lesley Parliament-Taylor
- Love this as a way to check for AI as an English teacher. Much for reliable and detailed than other checkers.
- Ayesha Ahmad
- I'd give this at least four stars because this helps me find AI cheating much more reliably than stupid AI detectors. But why is the free version, which gives me 150 docs a month to view, telling me I have used it on 150 docs and now I need to upgrade, when legit I have used it on 15 docs at the most this month so far? It's KILLING me. I am a teacher, no, I can't afford to add one more subscription on. I don't need more than 150 docs a month. But it's locking me out anyway. If you could fix that, I'd give at least four stars!
- Dawn Kitley
- This gives me a good idea of how my students are formulating their thoughts and working out their assignments. It also allows me to see how quickly/efficiently they work and if the assignment is too easy/difficult/time consuming.
- Tiffany Cross
- This extension is a lifesaver as a Middle School Language Arts teacher. It helps me to see when students are struggling with a writing assignment. And if there happens to be any academic dishonesty, I love that it provides a date and time frame to be able to use other district resources to conclusively determine whether it has occurred without just going on a suspicion. So much time and energy saved to be able to determine students needs and adapt lessons to meet those needs.
- Nick Gravlin
- New Update has made it unusable, it has been 4 days and I have not heard anything about fixing the bug of it always asking you to "See full history - Sign in with Google"
- Lisa Thompson
- Revision History is a big help. Being able to watch the work being done in real time is a big deal. It allows me to understand how much my students rely on other sources for ideas, spelling and punctuation, which then allows me to tailor lessons to shore up those weak spots.
- Jen Byrne
- I love that I can see what is actually happening in documents with work. I hate using any one aspect of writing to determine if work done by students is their own, or if it is being copied from another source. The replay allows me to see what the writing process is and how to actually guide students in the areas which are causing them enough struggle to look for an outside source.
- Tony A
- You beautiful people just helped me prove that I wrote my paper and not AI. Everyone deserves a raise.
- Matthew N
- I admit I had latched on to a few programs that served me well as an experienced teacher and faculty head, but I gave Revision History a go this week and have found its location top of each assignment, and very easy to use features, and layers (so I can much deeper dive on patterns which concern me) has really helped me to identify who has cut corners, and who has worked ethically and transparently. Easy, fast, a range of very easy to skim and use features, and ways I can screen capture evidence for colleagues, students, parents etc - wonderful! It's not cheap, but we're happy with our trial, and will at least extend it for the staff who are engaging, at least for a little while longer.
- Jennifer Macausland
- This is a lifesaver when correcting long peices of writing. A real gamechanger in the age of AI.
- Samantha Phelps
- I really love using this to help fight against the inappropriate use of AI in the classroom. However, there are two big issues that I wish they would resolve; 1) I wish that I could easily turn on and off the analysis. It counts against my 150 even if I want to look at a document of my own creation. Therefore, I was forced to pay for the extension very early in the year if I wanted to continue to use it. 2) I also need/want to be able to down load the report and/or the draft play video so that I can share it with administration and parents as evidence of my concerns. Revision History's largest competitor, Draftback, allows for both. I am tempted to instead pay for the deluxe version of DraftBack just to have access to this feature though I prefer Revision History's other features.
- Ryan Stout
- Do not listen to the low reviews on this extension; all of them are about the price (or are probably written by spiteful students). I am an ELA teacher that has been trying to fight the good fight against unethical use of AI in the classroom. I have gone as far to limit chromebook use as much as possible, and this extension makes me feel like I can trust students again. Does it stop them from retyping everything? No. Does it stop them just copying and pasting a whole essay? Yes. This is an integral tool in the modern teacher's toolbelt. And the price, ~$40 a year? Yeah, I'll pay it. If you don't pay, just use it on students/essays you suspect and the 150 UNIQUE essays will be plenty. Thank you for this tool.
- Olivia Ruff
- This has been a super helpful tool as a teacher to ensure academic integrity.
- Elizabeth Reider
- This app is good for monitoring student drafting, however, once it became a paid subscription it has become very limited. I would like to print off the revision history to have documentation of cheating and plagiarism. I am no longer able to print this off.
- John Ashley
- Was a great app, but once they started charging for it it became unusable and annoying.
- Stanley Cui
- This app is very limited, and you can only see very few things with this app. When I just want to view a doc, it just already counts as a doc. I wish that when we want to see the revision, then it counts as a doc.
- Buzz Rubenstein
- Hi all -- Buzz here, CEO of Revision History. We're fixing an ANNOYING sign out bug by EOD that will stop Revision History from constantly signing out every time a new doc loads. Sorry for the trouble and thanks for bearing with us!
- Rachel Stewart
- Very helpful in monitoring student writing progress and catching cheating. The development/support team is always quick, friendly, and helpful when I've got a problem, too!
- Jason Di Gennaro
- Fantastic extension that allows me to see where my students might be having trouble in the writing process. There is no real way to stop students from cheating if allowing them to work digitally on their own, but it's also incredibly difficult to promote good writing practice if requiring students to work on their writing only during class hours (or through hand-written pieces only). Instead, I've found that using Revision History allows me to help them understand the accountability a bit more, and it forces them to work harder to cheat. At some point, it becomes more work to avoid learning and improving as writers, and this app supports that approach. The developer is very receptive to feedback and has made several improvements (multi-tab history, for example) to this already very useful tool.
- Dan Fraga
- Revision History has literally changed the way I grade written work in my ELA classes. The program is truly revolutionary and has effectively reduced/eliminated instances of student plagiarism. I am able to show my students the power of Revision History and how I am able to use it to verify the authenticity of student work. After demonstrating to my classes what Revision History is able to do, my students simply do not even bother to plagiarize anymore, as they understand how quickly they will be caught. To the teachers/reviewers complaining about having to pay for a subscription: get over it. I will happily pay the $5 monthly fee (less than a single cup of Starbucks per month) for the peace of mind Revision History brings and the countless hours of aggravation it saves. I hope the creators of Revision History make a fortune off of this program.
- BRANDON NORRIS
- Such a good tool for assessing student writing. Being able to see how much time students are spending on the writing process is useful to determine who needs one on one help. Easy to see when and how often students are copying in information, makes it easier to see if they are using someone (or something in the case of AI) else's work. I also get a lot less pushback from parents if I can show them the replay of their student copying in work. The replay function is also very useful to review the editing process with students and see where they can improve. I'm telling all my fellow teachers about this extension.
- Katherine Mewborne
- This is one of the most helpful tools I have when assessing student writing. Being able to see how much time students are spending in comparison to what they produce is great, and knowing what has been pasted in from other sources helps identify plagiarism/inappropriate AI use. Keep the new features coming!
- Suzanne Parakh
- This has been a game changer. I am able to see a video of the drafting process in real time to see chunks of information being pasted in and find AI material. I'd like to be able to download and share the video for parents to see the evidence, etc. when they has questions. I'd also love to be able to see where the info is copied and pasted from, if not from AI.
- Mark Setzler
- What a wonderful program. Some folks are complaining about the limit to how many times it can be used a month and what counts as a use, but $32 a year is completely reasonable to be able to see whether a student pasted in a chunk of AI-generated material with the proof to show it happened. This extension will save me LOTS of time in assessing plagiarism situations. I also very much like the verbal-entry to address students reading their AI output in. Four stars? If I had the option of 4.5, that's what I would give. It may not be a possibility, but it would be wonderful if Revision History could distinguish between instances of copying and pasting from within the document--i.e., moving material around as part of a student's revisions--and copying and pasting in new material from an external source.
- Victoria Pirolli
- Overall the features are amazing and work well. However, if you are using the free version, you are limited to 150 documents per month. This is fine, but Revision History automatically starts analyzing any Google doc you open and you lose one of your free documents. It would be extremely helpful to have an easy way to turn the extension on when you want to use it. For now I have to remember to disable the extension before opening Google Docs that are not student assignments.
- Aaron Reeves
- Good quick reference for teachers. How long they worked on it & large copy paste detected automatically!!!!
- Stephanie Symes
- This is an excellent extension for keeping students accountable. I now live in terror that one day it will be locked behind a unaffordable pay wall. Thanks for this amazing work team! You are doing us all a service!
- Buzz Rubenstein
- Hi all -- Buzz from Revision History here. We've just pushed out a SSO login/sign up option through Google (great!) but it's now forcing some existing Plus users to sign out/sign back in for their Plus status to be reflected (not great...hence the 4 star self-review). We're working on a quick fix to avoid this, but in the meantime if you're facing this issue here is a manual solution. Apologies for the trouble -- reach out to [email protected] with any further questions: Step 1: Click the puzzle piece icon to the right of the URL bar Step 2: Click the Revision History extension icon (which should trigger a pop-up), then click log out Step 3: Click "Activate free document replay" and log back in
- Rebecca Thomson
- We are loving this, the tools are useful such as play back of student work, identification of parts copied and pasted, and time spent on document.
- Travis Shedd
- Some of the Plus Analysis tools are useful, such as being able to quickly see if any parts were copied and pasted, however the drafting process replay function is unusable. I tested it on some student essays from last year to see if this was something I could add to my toolbox and potentially replace Draftback, but the replayer made so many errors that it turned legitimate student work into a garbled mess.
- Alex Caamaño
- This is a great extension that can definitely be useful to an educator. For me the main sticking point is that it only seems to replay activity on the main sheet of a Google Doc, and not on any tabs that may be present in that Doc. I have not been able to use this for any questionable content that occurs in a tab.
- Elizabeth Davis
- This is a very useful tool. I highly recommend it.
- Devon Bennett
- This is a really helpful extension to use in conjunction with a solid drafting process and reviewing of drafts by the teacher. I am using it to authenticate student work for VCE. My only wish is that I could download the video replay to show students or parents what was happening.
- Incognito
- this is absolutely absurd and do not recommend teachers to use this. I do not condone any English teacher to use this because it ruins the students day and does not prove anything otherwise. One of my students wrote his completely fair, but this didn't detect it well. I give this application a solid 1/5 stars. If so I would give it a 0 but it doesn't have a function for that. Please delete this extension for it doesn't help with any academic dishonesty, because it doesn't show any proof it was copy pasted in any sort of way.
- Kelly Bousum
- I teach high school English, and my students do a lot of writing. Revision History allows me to see students' progress and avoid academic misconduct. I lost access to Revision History for a few weeks; nothing else compared.
- Verónica Cinosi
- Very helpful in assessing the originality and process of student work. Thank you!
- Stephen Collyer
- Super helpful.
- Christiane Émond
- This has helped me to define what is unacceptable work for my high schoolers. I no longer "accuse" anyone of plagiarism or using A.I., I simply say that a text is not an original and cannot be corrected as such. It has saved my from students (and parents!) anger at hearing the word "cheater", which I could suspect but not prove. We have been able to get students to admit to using A.I. and we have been able to move on to a more productive conversation. For the original writer, It is also great to see how they write, what they changed. To see their editing process is very helpful toward making them better writers.
- Denine Benedetto
- Very helpful in assessing the originality and process of student work.
- Whitney Gallagher
- This tool helps so much with seeing how students are writing. I had a glitch where it wasn't working recently, but when I called, the owner was able to walk me through how to get signed up again (click the puzzle piece/extension, then sign up again).