Requires the Essential tier or above.
Activity history is a searchable timeline of what is happening in Google Drive: who did what, to which file, and when. It records edits, sharing changes, moves, deletions and membership changes.
Where to find it
It is the same view in four places, each scoped to what you are looking at:
| Where | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Drive Management > Activity History | Activity across the whole organisation |
| The Activity tab on a shared drive | Activity within that drive |
| The Drive Activity tab on a user (Directory > Users) | Actions that user performed, or activity on files they own |
| A file's action menu | The history of that single file |
Filter and share a view
Filter by date and time, event type, person and drive. A filtered view keeps its filters in the page address, so you can bookmark a view you check regularly, or send the link to a colleague and they will see the same results.
Values in the table are links. Select a user, drive or folder to go straight to it. Selecting a file name opens that file's details.
A recent change is not showing
A change you have just made, such as a permission change on a file, may not appear in activity history until the shared drive is synced. Sync runs automatically on every tier. Where you can act on shared drives (Pro and above), use Sync now on that shared drive to bring it up to date straight away, then check again.
Worth checking regularly
- Sharing changes on sensitive drives. Filter the drive, then filter to sharing events, and bookmark the result.
- What a leaver did before they left. Open their Drive Activity tab and set the date range to their last few weeks.
- What happened to a file. Open activity history from the file's action menu rather than searching the organisation-wide view.
This is not the same as the CloudM audit log. The audit log records changes made through CloudM. Activity history records what happened in Google Drive, whoever did it and wherever they did it.
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