Overview
PaperTrail lets you watch any Google Doc being written from the very first keystroke to the last. Open it on a student's document and you'll see exactly how the text came together — every word typed, every paragraph rewritten, every chunk of text that appeared all at once.
HOW IT WORKS
Click the PaperTrail bubble on any Google Doc or Classroom document. The sidebar opens and analyses the full revision history in seconds. Then hit Open Playback to watch the document rebuild itself in real time.
During playback, additions are colour-coded so your eye goes straight to what matters. Small additions glow green and fade quietly — normal typing. Medium additions flash amber — a pasted sentence, worth a glance. Large additions pulse red — hundreds of characters appearing in a single revision. At 25x or 50x speed you can scan a long essay in seconds and the red flashes tell you exactly where to look.
WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT
Most revision tools tell you that something was pasted. PaperTrail shows you what was pasted — the full text, with the timestamp and author, right there in the sidebar.
The paste comparison window is unique. Click Compare in the Paste Events section and every flagged paste opens side by side with a similarity score between each pair. A score above 70% means two pastes share most of the same words — a strong signal that content was moved around to look more original than it is. This catches something playback alone doesn't.
The sidebar also gives you a risk score from 0 to 100, a correction ratio (human writers typically delete 15-35% of what they type — very low ratios are a flag), writing session breakdown, and a revision timeline where every paste event is marked in red.
WHO IT'S FOR
Teachers who want to understand how a piece of writing was actually produced. Academic integrity coordinators who need to document unusual writing patterns. Anyone who has ever looked at a polished essay from a student who struggles in class and wondered how it got written.
PaperTrail doesn't make accusations. It makes the writing process visible so you can have an informed conversation.
PRIVACY
PaperTrail reads revision data directly from Google's own API — the same data behind the built-in revision history. Nothing is sent to any external server. No data is stored between sessions. No account required. Everything runs locally in your browser.
Works in Google Docs and Google Classroom. Free, with no usage limits.
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🔐 Security Analysis
This extension hasn't been security-scanned yet.
