How to Disable AI Overview: What Actually Works in Google

If you are looking up how to disable AI Overview, the honest answer is that you can’t, at least not fully. Google’s help page calls the feature a core part of Search and says it cannot be turned off. However, a few workarounds hide it, and the best one takes about a minute to set up in Chrome.

There is no setting that removes AI Overviews for good. Google Search Help puts them in the same group as knowledge panels, which are built into the results page. So every fix below works around the feature and does not switch it off.

The one official option is the Web filter. After you search, pick Web from the tabs under the search box, and Google shows plain text links without AI Overviews. The catch is that it applies to one search at a time.

For a lasting result, you need to make that Web view your default. Next, we compare what each method really does.

Most guides list the same handful of tricks. The table below shows what each one changes and how long the effect lasts.

The Labs toggle deserves a warning, since it ranks high in searches. Engadget notes that it dates from the feature’s experimental days. Google itself says the toggle won’t disable all AI Overviews.

Meanwhile, Proton and Fox News both warn that the -ai trick is not guaranteed. Fox adds that it can also exclude useful pages that contain the letters AI.

Extensions come with their own trade-off. As Engadget explains, Bye Bye Google AI only hides the response, which Google still generates. In exchange, you keep the normal All tab with its knowledge panels and videos.

This is the fix most people want, because it runs on every search. Google has not documented it as a feature, so it could change without notice. These steps for desktop Chrome come from tenbluelinks.org, a site built around this trick:

1. Open chrome://settings/searchEngines in the address bar.
2. Click Add next to Site search.
3. Enter Google Web as the name and @web as the shortcut.
4. Paste {google:baseURL}search?q=%s&udm=14 as the URL.
5. Open the menu beside Google Web and choose Make default.

On phones, the method is different. Visit tenbluelinks.org in Chrome, run any Google search in a new tab, and then open Chrome settings. Under Search engine, pick Google Web from the recently visited list.

Keep in mind what you give up. Because the Web view shows text links only, you also lose the extras on the main results page.

No, according to Google. The question took off after Alphabet’s quarterly results, when Mobilissimo reports that shares fell sharply. A Reddit user then said their phone had gone back to classic results, though that was one person’s observation.

On 30 October, The Verge asked Google about a Bluesky post claiming the feature was now off by default. Spokesperson Peter Schottenfels answered: “We haven’t reduced the triggering of AI Overviews.” He added that the summaries are dynamic and do not appear on every query.

In particular, keyword and navigational searches may not trigger one. That could explain why some users think the feature has vanished. A short bug may have added to the confusion, since Search Engine Roundtable saw the AI Overview label go missing on some desktop results around 20 October. It returned two days later.

Google’s recent moves also point the other way. On 15 October, its official blog announced more inline links and news carousels for AI answers. That post offers no new way to turn them off.

Trust is the obvious reason. The photo below, shared on Wikimedia Commons, shows a Google AI answer denying a Warsaw Zoo program while the zoo’s own plaque describes it. One mistake proves little, but moments like that stick.

Researchers have also tested the effect directly. A preregistered field experiment with 1,100 people found that hiding AI Overviews and AI Mode raised clicks to publishers. An AI Mode only setup, on the other hand, lowered clicks and reduced trust in what people found.

Curiously, Google Trends also shows “how to disable AI Overview meme” rising fast worldwide. We could not trace it to one viral post, so treat it as a sign of frustration and nothing more.

If workarounds feel like too much effort, you can change search engines. DuckDuckGo runs an AI-free page at noai.duckduckgo.com with no AI answers or chat prompts. In June, TechCrunch reported that it also released Chrome and Firefox extensions to make that page your default.

Demand looks real. Traffic to the page hit about three times its baseline on 28 May, after Google’s big search announcement. On iPhone, Fox News adds, you can change the default engine under Settings, then Search, then Search Engine.

Of course, some people dislike Google’s summaries and not AI answers in general. In that case, our Perplexity AI review covers an engine built around cited sources, along with its limits.

Publishers have a separate control, and it applies to their pages and not to what readers see. Digiday reported in June that the UK competition regulator ordered Google to offer an opt-out. Google said the Search Console toggle would roll out globally.

However, publishers doubt they can use it safely. The toggle covers AI Overviews and AI Mode together, and Google gives no AI-specific click data to judge the impact.

Those worries got louder this week. On 29 October, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman named AI Overviews and AI Mode as the biggest cause of falling search referrals, PPC Land reported. Reddit said those referrals fell by more than one million a week on average in October.

Prefer answers you can check? Our guide to the best AI research tools compares options that cite their sources. For academic questions, our Consensus AI review explains a search engine built on published studies.

Sources

The Verge, Google Search Help, Google Blog, Mobilissimo, Fox News, Engadget, Proton, tenbluelinks.org, Search Engine Roundtable, arXiv, TechCrunch, Digiday, PPC Land. *Photos: Google sign, Charleston Road by Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped and resized; Google AI answer vs Warsaw Zoo plaque by Gknor, CC0, resized and placed on a blurred background.*