Google Forms add-ons

Last updated September 2026 · ~12 minute read

Short answer: a Google Forms add-on is third-party code you install from the Google Workspace Marketplace into the Forms editor, on a computer. It runs with permissions you grant to your Google Account, and — this is the part most people get wrong — Google documents that it cannot change the form respondents see. Add-ons extend the place you build the form, not the place people fill it in.

The useful question about an add-on is not “which one should I install?” — we cannot test what your account will grant — but “what can this thing actually see?”, which Google's own documentation does answer.

How we checked

Every claim below is taken from Google's own pages, which we read rather than summarised from memory: Use add-ons, Apps Script, AppSheet & Data Studio (both the Computer and the iPhone & iPad versions of the page), Find and install an app in the Marketplace, Uninstall a Marketplace app or add-on, Manage third-party apps & services with access to your account, Google's admin page on controlling which apps access Google Workspace data, and three developer pages: Extend Google Forms with add-ons, Authorization scopes for Editor add-ons and Open and use installed add-ons. Where Google's pages disagree with each other, we say so instead of picking one.

What an add-on is — and what it is not

An add-on is a small application, written by somebody other than Google, that is published to the Google Workspace Marketplace and installs into the Google Forms editor. Once installed it can add menu items, sidebars and dialogs to the editor, and it can run code against your form and, depending on what you authorise, other things in your account.

What it is not: an app you download, or a setting inside Google Forms. The word “add-on” gets used loosely for “anything that adds a feature to Google Forms”, and that looseness causes most of the confusion on this page.

Installing and running one

Google Forms takes a different route from the rest of the editors, and this is the single most common reason people cannot find the menu. Google's help centre gives the Docs, Sheets and Slides path as Extensions › Add-ons › Get add-ons. For Forms, the same page gives a different path: open a form on your computer, then

“At the top right, click More” … “Click Add-ons”

From the Marketplace panel, Google's documented steps are to click the add-on for its full description, then click Install and Continue; then “Read the message, then click Allow”; then “After the add-on installs, click Done”.

Where it appears afterwards is where Google's two documentation sets diverge, so here are both. The help centre says installed add-ons are found by clicking Add-ons at the top. The developer documentation says:

“Google Forms doesn't use the same menu bar as the other editors. Instead, you can find Forms add-on menu items by clicking the extension icon in the upper left of the Forms editor interface.”

Read that as “somewhere in the editor toolbar” rather than a promise about a corner: the two pages disagree on where the icon sits, and we have not verified its position.

One flat constraint, quoted from the iPhone & iPad version of Google's add-ons help page:

“Add-ons aren't available on iPhone or iPad; you'll have to use a computer.”

That is not a Forms quirk. Marketplace add-ons are a desktop-browser feature of the editors.

Permissions: what you are actually granting

The “Allow” screen is not a formality. It is the entire security boundary between a stranger's code and your Google Account.

The authorisation screen

Google describes what happens at install time as an OAuth consent flow:

“The OAuth consent screen appears and asks you to grant permission to the app.”

The screen carries “a summary of your project, its policies, and the requested permissions”. Google also notes that the grant is not always all-or-nothing: “For many apps, you can specify which individual permissions to authorize. This provides more granular control over the data you share.” Whether you get that choice depends on the app, so read the screen rather than assuming it will be offered.

What scopes an add-on can request

An add-on declares the access it wants as OAuth scopes. Google's developer documentation states that add-ons “define the specific permissions they need using OAuth scopes, declared in the manifest file as URL strings”, and that for Editor add-ons “the required scopes are determined by the Google Apps Script service and methods the add-on code uses”. In other words, the permission list is a consequence of what the developer's code calls — it is not a curated promise about behaviour.

The distinction that matters to you is this file versus all your files. Google documents a narrow scope for the former; an add-on that uses the currentonly scope is asking only to “View and manage documents that this application has been installed in.” Google's own gloss on it: “If you add this comment to a Sheets add-on script project file, you are specifying that the add-on only needs permission to operate on the open Sheet, and not any other Sheets the user might have in Google Drive.” It comes with a limit — “The currentonly scope is only available within Apps Script Services” — so an add-on that calls Google Workspace APIs directly cannot stay inside it.

So if a timer add-on asks to see all of your Drive, that is a question worth asking the developer, not a box to tick.

If you are on a Workspace domain

On a managed Google Workspace account, your administrator may have already made this decision. Google's admin documentation defines three access states for third-party apps — Trusted, which “Can access all Google services (both restricted and unrestricted)”; Limited, which “Can only access unrestricted Google services”; and Blocked, which “Can't access any Google service.” Admins configure an app by “the app's name or client ID” against organisational units.

What you see when that bites: “If a user tries to install (or sign in to) an app you haven't trusted that accesses a restricted service, they're notified that the app is blocked.” Google's Marketplace help adds that where an administrator runs an allowlist, an “Approved for you” category shows only the apps you can actually install. So “the add-on won't install” is very often an admin policy, not a bug.

Seeing, managing and removing add-ons

Google documents three separate places, and they do three different jobs. Conflating them is how people end up believing an add-on is gone when its access is not.

• See what is installed. Google's uninstall page points at the Marketplace's own list: “Open workspace.google.com/marketplace/myapps.” In Docs, Sheets or Slides you can reach the same list via Extensions › Add-ons › Manage add-ons.
• Turn one off for a single file. In Forms, Google's help centre documents Settings › Manage Apps, then Options and the Use in this document toggle.
• Uninstall. From the same list, “Click Options and then Uninstall”, then “Click Uninstall App.” You can also open the app's Marketplace listing and click Uninstall there.

Does uninstalling revoke the add-on's access? Google's uninstall page opens by framing uninstalling as something you do when you “no longer want to allow it to have access to your data”, but it does not actually state that uninstalling revokes the grant — so we are not going to tell you that it does. What Google does document is a separate control: the third-party access list in your Google Account. There, choosing Remove access means “the app can't access your Google Account. This may make some features unavailable.” If your intent is to cut off access rather than tidy a menu, that is the page to visit, and it is worth checking it after any uninstall.

Note what removing access does not claim to do: Google's page says nothing about deleting data a developer already copied out. Before you connect an app, Google's own advice is to “read their privacy policy and security disclosures. From there, you can learn how the developer of the app uses your data and how they keep it safe.”

The honest risk

An add-on is third-party code running against your Google Account under the scopes you approved, on the developer's infrastructure and under the developer's privacy policy, not Google's. Google's Marketplace review is real, but Google describes it as a check that an app and its listing “meet Google's design, content, and style guidelines”; that is a publishing standard, not a data-processing guarantee, and it does not make the developer your processor or make Google answerable for what they do with what you granted. Nothing here says add-ons are unsafe: on a desktop they are often the right tool. It says the decision is yours, and it is made on the permissions screen in about four seconds by someone who is in a hurry. Slowing those four seconds down is the whole of the advice.

We do not rank or recommend specific add-ons here: we have not audited anyone's code, and a recommendation that ages badly is worse than none. As illustrations of the categories that exist, these are live Marketplace listings whose pages we fetched (title and description only — we have not installed or tested them, and we quote no prices because we cannot source them): Form Timer and Timer for Google Forms™ for quiz timing, and Form Notify for submission emails and mail merge. Naming them is not an endorsement of any of them.

What add-ons cannot do

They do not change what respondents see

This is the assumption that sends people looking for an add-on that will “add a progress bar” or “put a countdown on the form”. Google's developer documentation is unusually blunt about it:

“Forms add-ons only extend the Forms editor itself, where the forms are constructed. Forms add-ons can't extend the form that is presented to potential respondents.”

Custom menus, dialogs and sidebars “extend the Google Forms editor, not the form that respondents see.” What an add-on can do is react to a submission after the fact: Google documents that “An installable form submit trigger runs when a user responds to a form”, and that “Installable triggers always run under the account of the person who created them” — so the code runs as you, not as your respondent. That is how notification, merge and limiter add-ons work. Anything a respondent genuinely sees changed on the live form is coming from Google Forms' own settings, or from the add-on editing your form's contents, not from add-on UI.

A related point about collaborators, since it is often misread as “respondents”: Google notes that “Collaborators who don't have the Editor add-on installed see it in documents where the file creator used it.” Collaborators are people with edit access to the form, not people filling it in.

They do not raise Google's own limits

An add-on runs on top of Google Forms and inherits every platform limit the editor has. No Marketplace app lifts a Google Forms ceiling — see Google Forms response limits for what those ceilings actually are. Add-ons in the “limiter” category do the reverse: they impose a limit you chose, closing the form at a response count, a date and time, or a spreadsheet value.

Where Forms+ fits (it is not an add-on)

To be plain about it: Forms+ is not a Google Forms add-on, and it cannot install or manage add-ons for you. It is an API client — a native iPhone and iPad app that signs in to your own Google account and works on the real forms already in your Drive, the same way the Forms website does.

Several of the capabilities people go to the Marketplace for exist as Forms+ Pro features instead — a response limiter, a form scheduler, response notifications, choice limits, certificates, documents and mail merge, and export to Google Sheets — and because Forms+ is a client rather than editor code, they work from a phone, which add-ons cannot. A per-respondent quiz timer is not on that list: nothing outside Google's own page can count a respondent down on a form link. And because Forms+ is an OAuth client on your account, you revoke it in exactly the same place you would revoke an add-on: your Google Account's third-party access list.

Of those Pro features, one deserves naming, because “merge each response into a document” is among the commonest reasons people open the Marketplace at all. In Forms+ it is Append to a Doc…, a PRO tool in the editor's tools menu under Automate, off until you switch it on, per form. On the first response that arrives while it is on, it creates a Google Doc in your own Drive named after the form, then appends every later submission as a dated entry listing each question and its answer — one running log, not one document per response. It is an example, not a list of what the app automates.

Add-on or app?

Frequently asked questions

Where is the Add-ons menu in Google Forms?

Google's help centre documents it as: open a form on your computer, “At the top right, click More”, then “Click Add-ons”. That is different from Docs, Sheets and Slides, where the path is Extensions › Add-ons › Get add-ons. Google's developer documentation adds that “Google Forms doesn't use the same menu bar as the other editors” and describes finding installed add-on menu items via an extension icon in the Forms editor.

Can I use Google Forms add-ons on an iPhone or iPad?

No. The iPhone and iPad version of Google's own help page for add-ons states: “Add-ons aren't available on iPhone or iPad; you'll have to use a computer.” Add-ons are a desktop-browser feature of the Forms editor.

Do add-ons change what respondents see when they fill in the form?

Almost never, and Google says so directly: “Forms add-ons only extend the Forms editor itself, where the forms are constructed. Forms add-ons can't extend the form that is presented to potential respondents.” An add-on can react after a submission — Google documents that “An installable form submit trigger runs when a user responds to a form” — but it cannot draw anything inside the live form.

Does uninstalling an add-on revoke its access to my Google Account?

Google's uninstall help page gives the steps to uninstall but does not state whether uninstalling revokes the app's access, so we will not claim that it does. The place Google does document revoking access is your Google Account's third-party access list, where choosing Remove access means, in Google's words, “the app can't access your Google Account. This may make some features unavailable.” Removing access stops future access; it says nothing about data the developer already holds.

Can an add-on raise Google Forms' response limits?

No. An add-on runs on top of Google Forms and is bound by the same platform limits as the editor itself. Add-ons in the response-limiting category do the opposite of raising a limit: they impose one of your own, by closing the form at a count, a date or a spreadsheet value.

Is Forms+ a Google Forms add-on?

No. Forms+ is a native iPhone and iPad client built on Google's official Forms API. It is not installed from the Google Workspace Marketplace, it does not appear in the Forms editor's add-ons menu, and it cannot install add-ons for you. It signs in to your Google account and works on the forms already in your Drive.