How to See Who Viewed Your Google Drive File

To see who viewed your Google Drive file, open the file in Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides, click the upward arrow icon in the top right (or go to Tools → Activity dashboard), and check the "Viewers" tab. This shows who opened the file and when. This feature only works for Google Workspace accounts, not personal Gmail accounts.

View File Activity on Desktop

Open the file in Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides
Click the trending arrow icon (↗) in the top-right corner, or go to Tools → Activity dashboard
Click the "Viewers" tab
See who viewed the file and when

You'll see each viewer's name, email, and their last viewed date.

View Activity on Mobile

The Activity dashboard isn't available in the mobile apps. You'll need to:

Open a browser on your phone
Go to docs.google.com and open the file
Request the desktop site
Access Tools → Activity dashboard

Or just wait until you're at a computer.

What You Can See

The Activity dashboard shows:

Viewers tab: Who opened the file and when they last viewed it
Viewer trend: A graph of views over time
All viewers: List of everyone who has ever opened the file

You cannot see:

How long someone spent viewing
Which parts of the document they looked at
Whether they downloaded or printed it

Limitations

Personal Gmail accounts: Activity dashboard is not available. You can only see who has access, not who actually viewed the file.

Privacy settings: Viewers can turn off their view history in their Google account settings. If they do, their views won't appear in your dashboard.

"Anyone with the link" sharing: If your file is shared via link, you'll only see viewers who were signed into Google when they opened it. Anonymous viewers don't appear.

Non-Google files: Activity tracking only works for Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms—not PDFs, images, or other uploaded files.

Check Who Has Access (Alternative)

If you can't see view history, you can at least see who has access:

Right-click the file in Google Drive
Click "Share"
View the list of people with access

This tells you who could view the file, even if you can't confirm they did.

For a complete picture of who has access to what across your entire Drive, Overdrive scans all your files and shows sharing permissions in one dashboard. See our full guide on finding who has access to your Google Drive.

Turn Off Your Own View History

If you don't want file owners to see when you view their documents:

Open any Google Doc, Sheet, or Slide
Go to Tools → Activity dashboard
Click "Privacy settings" (gear icon)
Turn off "Show my view history"

This applies to all files you view going forward.