Is there such a thing as a "git blame" for Google sheets

Question

I know that one can easily see the revision history of a Google Sheet. But then that's the same as running git log.. It shows shows a chronological order of changes to the file.

I'm actually interested in something that does what git blame does, which is actually selecting some piece of data and seeing who made that change and more importantly when. How can we do this?

Answer 1

Short answer

Google Sheets doesn't include that as a built-in feature. Google added a similar feature in 2019: the cell's edit history.

Explanation

Google Sheets UI access to the revision history is through File > Revision History. At this time it doesn't include an equivalent to git blame but Google recently (mid 2019) added an easy way to check cell history. Just right click on a cell and select Show edit History.

There is a free third-party developer tool called BetterLog that could help create a log for changes made by using Google Apps Script but be aware that Google Apps Script's triggers work on a "best effort basis" (meaning that some changes could not fire the corresponding trigger causing that some logs be missed).

Another alternative is to use the Google Drive API to access the Revision resource. This way, you could manipulate in a way similar to git blame.

Related

• Is there a quick way to see when a cell in a Google Sheets was last edited?
• Updating logging sheet from another sheet doesn't work after inserting code offset

Answer 2

This feature is now available in vanilla Google Sheets! Just right-click on the cell and select "Show edit history".

Edit:
Apparently this feature started rolling out on June 25, 2019, according to this blog post.
Also, looks like this has already been nicely answered!