Note: Hive Proofing underwent an upgrade in September of 2026.

The high-level changes include:

Note: If you'd like to enable AI Proofing, that is a separate app that you would need your workspace admin to enable.

The approvals feature in Hive is designed to help organize and manage project approvals efficiently. Users can access approvals from their Home Page or within specific action cards in projects.

You can add a file to be proofed by your team from within an action card. Click Add proof to add a new draft of the file you are working on.

You can also drag the file to the Approval app.

Note: You can attach video files to be proofed as well. See the full list of supported file types at the bottom of this article.
​

Once you have uploaded a new proof, you can confirm if you'd like an AI review and which reference documents you want to access. Add any other additional instructions that you think would be helpful for your proof.

If you want to skip this step and just Upload as a regular proof, click "Upload Only."

After the document is uploaded, you can select the approver type (internal, external, team).

Within each round, you'll be able to add stages to further delineate reviewer feedback. Once the route is set up, click the Request approval button again to make the approval route live and to trigger a notification for the first approver(s).

Request Review from a Team: You can send a request to an entire team by adding the 'team' as an approver. Once requested, a notification will be sent to all members of the team.

Add External Approver: Choose Add external approver if you would like to request approval from someone who is not in Hive. Simply enter their email address, and they will receive a link from Hive to review the content in the proofing window.

Note: You must add a proof to use this feature.

Change status after approval: Choose change status after approval to automate your approvals workflow by moving the action card to the appropriate status once a decision has been made.

If an assignment has been routed to you for your approval, it will be shown separately from your standard actions at the top of the My actions view in the "My Approvals" section. Click the item to begin the approval process.
​

You can proof a document by clicking the file from the action card for your assignment. Once in the proofing tool, you can add a variety of annotations, stamps, shapes, text, free-hand drawings, and more.

To add a basic annotation, click "Annotate" in the upper panel and leave your comment.

Add highlights, freehand lines, highlights and more by clicking on the various buttons under "Annotate." You can append a comment to the lines or highlights as well.

Additionally, you can add:

In PDF view, outside version comparison, choose Select and drag from an empty area of the page to draw a selection box around annotations. You can also use Shift, Cmd, or Ctrl while clicking annotations to select several.

Select two or more saved annotations on the same page, then choose Group in the bottom toolbar. You must be able to edit every selected annotation. Replies, annotations with replies, and open AI suggestions cannot be grouped. Select a group and choose Ungroup to separate its annotations.

Drag a movable annotation in a group to move the group’s movable annotations together. Text-anchored marks, such as highlights, stay in place.

The viewer remembers your annotation styling in this browser, including supported colours, line widths, and text styles. Related tools share saved styles: for example, rectangles and ellipses use the same shape styling. The last style you apply becomes the default for new annotations in that tool group.

Open More (⋯) > Customize > Personal preferences to turn Compact comments on or off. It is on by default: long comments show up to three lines, and replies stay folded until you open the thread. This preference applies only to you in this browser.

You can also compare versions when proofing various iterations of the same document. To do that, click the three "More" dots in the upper right hand corner and select "Compare" at the bottom of the list.

From there, you'll be able to view each proof side-by-side and better understand the differences and changes.

If a direct link opens an older proof version and a newer version is available to you, the viewer shows a notice with View latest. Choose it to open the latest version you can access.

Open More (⋯) to download or save a proof. For PDFs and documents, the options include:

For video proofs, choose Download comments for a PDF of comments or Download video for the video file.

When a proof has open AI suggestions, signed-in reviewers downloading with annotations or downloading video comments can choose which comments to include:

Choose Download to export. Downloading does not change comments or suggestions in Hive. The comment-source choice does not appear for Download selected annotation, which exports only your selected annotations.

To save every file you can see in a Proofing folder, open the action card’s Proofing folder, select its three-dot menu (⋯), and choose Download folder. Hive downloads a ZIP named after the folder, with the current visible version of each file. Viewers with read-only access can use this option too.

If the folder has no downloadable files, the menu shows a disabled No files to download item. For a single proof or an annotated PDF, use the proof viewer’s download options instead.

When you are ready to sign off, click "Approve" or "Request Changes" based on your feedback. If you want to approve directly from the action card, scroll to the proofing section and choose your approval type.

You can make a decision for the proof you have been routed for approval from the action card for your approval assignment:

Pro Tip: You can also mark your decision within the proof itself by selecting the green check mark for approve and the red button for require changes. See Section 5.

If you'd like to use our AI Proofing feature, you can start an AI review by selecting the star icon in the right hand corner, next to the comment box. Once you click "Generate AI review," the review will begin in the proof itself.

Once the AI proofing review is complete, the recommendations will populate in that right-hand bar. You can go through each recommendation and choose to promote it to an annotation, or clear it.

The circle icon on the top left of each annotation will guide you through the process of Resolving, Dismissing, or Promoting the recommendation to an annotation.

After you've started an approval round, you can click into the settings and:

For a live website, add its link as a proof. You can also choose a file from Google Drive. To proof an email, save the message as an .eml or .msg file, then upload it through Add proof. There is no separate Email option in the Add proof menu.

You can also mark off 'Add as internal version,' which ensures that the version you're uploading isn't accessible by external proofers.

If you need to upload multiple files into one document, you can do that a few ways.

The following file types are supported in proofing:
​Documents
.pdf, .doc, .docx, .xslx, .pptx, .rtf, .odt, .ods, .odp

Images
.bmp, .wmf, .emf, .hdp, .jpg, .jp2, .jpc, .png, .tif, .tiff

Videos
.mp4, .ogg, .webm

Other

.xps, .oxps, .xml, .xod, .