In non-limiting examples of the present disclosure, systems, methods and devices for assisting with providing a dependency-based presence indication are presented. An indication that a first application instance of a co-authored file is active may be received. An indication that a second application instance associated with the co-authored file is concurrently active with the first application instance may be received. A data-modification indication that data affecting at least one object displayed on a user interface of a computing device executing the first application is being accessed by a second computing device executing the second application may be received. The at least one object may be caused to be highlighted on the user interface of the computing device executing the first application instance based on the received data-modification indication.