ViewBack

About

ViewBack reconstructs the complete edit history of a Google Doc and plays it back, so you can watch a document being written from the first character to the last.

Open a Google Doc you have access to, click ViewBack, and it rebuilds the document's revision history locally in your browser, then opens an interactive replay in a new tab.

WHAT YOU CAN DO
- Replay the writing: press play to watch the document type itself out, or scrub, step, and jump to any point. Adjustable playback speed.
- See the activity timeline: a chart of how the document grew over time, when the writing happened, and where in the document each change was made.
- Review large insertions: the Bulk Inserts panel lists every big single insert (for example, pasted blocks) with previews and timestamps, and exports them to CSV.
- Break it into sessions: edits are grouped into writing sessions by idle time, showing active time, edit counts, and characters added or removed for each.
- Export the full edit history as JSON for your own analysis.
- Light and dark themes.

HOW TO USE
1. Open the Google Doc you want to review (you'll need to be signed in and able to open the document yourself).
2. Click the ViewBack icon in your browser toolbar.
3. Choose "Extract & open replay." The reconstructed history opens in a new tab.

PRIVACY
ViewBack runs entirely in your browser. It reads the document's revision history using your own signed-in session and stores the result locally on your device. Nothing is uploaded to any external server, and the developer never sees your documents.

ViewBack is an independent tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google. It works with documents whose edit history is available to your Google account.