Time Warp

Time Warp lets you travel through the history of your GeoSheet data. Every cell edit is tracked with a timestamp, and you can scrub through time to see exactly what your data looked like at any point in the past.

Enabling Time Warp

Time Warp is available on any GeoSheet with temporal tracking enabled:

Open a GeoSheet
Click the Time Warp icon in the toolbar (clock icon)
The Time Warp header panel appears below the toolbar

Temporal tracking is enabled automatically when you first open Time Warp. Once enabled, all subsequent cell edits are recorded with timestamps.

The Time Warp Panel

The Time Warp panel sits in the header area and contains:

Timeline slider — drag to scrub through time. The slider spans from the earliest recorded edit to the current moment.
Sparkline — a compact chart showing data activity (edit density) over time, aligned to the global timeline.
Timestamp display — shows the exact date and time of the current position.
Navigation controls — step forward or backward through individual snapshots.

Browsing History

Drag the timeline slider to move through time. The grid updates instantly to show the state of all cells at the selected timestamp:

Past timestamps — the grid becomes read-only, showing historical data with a visual indicator that you are viewing a past state.
Latest timestamp — the grid is fully editable. New edits are recorded and the timeline auto-advances.

Time Warp operates at the workbook level — when you scrub to a point in time, all sheets in the workbook reflect that same moment. Switch between sheets and they all show consistent historical state.

Live Editing

When positioned at the latest timestamp, you can edit cells normally:

New edits are recorded with the current timestamp
The timeline auto-advances to include your new edit
Collaborators see your edits in real-time — if they are also at the latest timestamp, their view auto-advances too

Temporal Formulas

Use the @ operator in any formula to reference a cell's historical value:

=A1@"2026-01-01"           # Value of A1 on January 1, 2026
=A1@"2026-03-15T14:30:00"  # Value at a specific time
=SUM(A1:A10@"2026-06-15")  # Sum of a range at a past date

Temporal references work with any formula — combine them with lookups, conditionals, and aggregations to compare current data against historical baselines.

Examples

Formula	Description
`=A1 - A1@"2026-01-01"`	Change since January 1
`=IF(B1 > B1@"2026-03-01", "Up", "Down")`	Direction of change
`=AVERAGE(C1:C100) - AVERAGE(C1:C100@"2025-12-31")`	Average shift year-over-year

Managing History

Click the Manage History button in the Time Warp panel to open the history management modal. The modal shows a visual timeline with draggable markers and provides three actions:

Delete All History

Removes all temporal history for the workbook. The current cell values are preserved, but all past snapshots are deleted. This action is irreversible.

Trim to Range

Select a start and end point on the timeline using the draggable markers. All history outside that range is deleted. Use this to keep only relevant data and reduce storage.

Copy Snapshot to Now

Select a point in time, and all cell values from that snapshot are copied to the current state as new edits. The original history is preserved. This is useful for reverting to a known-good state without losing the record of what changed.

Tips

Compare periods — use temporal formulas to build dashboards that show period-over-period changes without duplicating data.
Audit trail — Time Warp serves as a built-in audit log. See exactly who changed what and when (combined with collaboration presence).
Safe experimentation — make changes freely knowing you can always view or restore previous states.
Workbook consistency — because Time Warp is workbook-level, cross-sheet formulas always reference the same point in time when browsing history.