Draftback - Play Back Your Own Google Docs in Chrome

[Arthur]

To see it in action read this article: How I reverse engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes, or download the extension and test it out with your own documents.

 

Website / Download (Chrome Web Store)

 

Draftback is a Chrome extension that lets you play back any Google Docs revision history (for docs you can edit). It’s like going back in time to look over your own shoulder as you write.

 

If you've ever typed anything into a Google Doc, you can now play it back as if it were a movie — like traveling through time to look over your own shoulder as you write.

 

This is possible because every document written in Google Docs since about May 2010 has a revision history that tracks every change, by every user, with timestamps accurate to the microsecond; these histories are available to anyone with “Edit” permissions; and I have written a piece of software that can find, decode, and rebuild the history for any given document.

 

Since Draftback is a Chrome extension, your Docs data never leaves your own computer, and, unless you explicitly publish an excerpt, the extension never communicates any sensitive data with any server—it just fetches it over a secure connection from Google. All the computation for rendering the playback is done by your own computer, and it’s stored there, too.

 

http://vgy.me/YTW0Kx.png

 

http://vgy.me/IfIzZI.png

 

http://vgy.me/3mENTK.png

Edited June 11, 2015 by Arthur