---
title: Tracking Your File Provider’s Changes
framework: fileprovider
role: collectionGroup
path: fileprovider/tracking-your-file-provider-s-changes
---

# Tracking Your File Provider’s Changes

Create an enumerator to track changes to your file provider’s content.

## Overview

Overview While an enumerator is active, it also tracks any changes to its contents. The system only tracks changes to a document or folder while it has an active enumerator for that item (for example, while a document is open or a folder is being browsed). note: The system always tracks changes to the working set. If it doesn’t have an active enumerator for the working set, it creates a new one.

When your file provider app or extension identifies a change to its content: Call the NSFileProviderManager class’s signalEnumerator(for:completionHandler:) method to notify the system of the change. Pass the item’s identifier as the containerItemIdentifier property. If the change affects the working set, call signalEnumerator(for:completionHandler:) a second time. Pass the workingSet constant as the containerItemIdentifier property. This tells the system to update the working set. After the system is alerted to the change, it calls enumerateChanges(for:from:) on any affected, active enumerations and updates the browser’s user interface as needed. This method is asynchronous. When it’s called, the enumerator gathers information about the items (perhaps from a remote server) in the background, and returns the results to the specified observer (an object that adopts the NSFileProviderChangeObserver protocol).

## Topics

### Tracking Document Changes

- [Tracking Changes to Documents](fileprovider/tracking-changes-to-documents.md)

### Signaling Changes with Push Notifications

- [Using push notifications to signal changes](fileprovider/using-push-notifications-to-signal-changes.md)

## See Also

### Change Tracking

- [NSFileProviderChangeObserver](fileprovider/nsfileproviderchangeobserver.md)
- [NSFileProviderSyncAnchor](fileprovider/nsfileprovidersyncanchor.md)