For Google Drive apps that must track changes to files, the changes collection provides an efficient way to detect all file changes, including those shared with a user. If the file has changed, the collection provides the current state of each file.

Get start page token

To request the page token for the current state of the account, use the changes.getStartPageToken. Store and use this token in your initial call to changes.list.

To retrieve the current page token:

Get changes

To retrieve the list of changes for the currently signed in user, send a GET request to the changes collection, as detailed in the changes.list.

Entries in the changes collection are in chronological order (the oldest changes appear first). The includeRemoved and restrictToMyDrive query parameters determine whether the response should include removed or shared items.

The changes collection in the response might contain a nextPageToken. If the nextPageToken is listed, it can be used to gather the next page of changes. If it's not listed, the client application should store the newStartPageToken in the response for future use. With the page token stored, the client application is prepared to query again for future changes.

Receive notifications

Use the changes.watch method to subscribe to updates in the change log. Notifications don't contain details about the changes. Instead, they indicate that new changes are available. To retrieve the actual changes, poll the change feed as described in Get changes.

For more information, see Notifications for resource changes.