How to Turn Off Google AI

Start with the honest answer: you cannot fully turn off Google AI in Search. Google says so itself. Its help page for AI Overviews, the AI summaries that sit at the top of normal results, puts it in plain words: AI Overviews are a core Google Search feature, like knowledge panels, and features cannot be turned off. No setting in your Google Account, in Search settings or in the Google app changes that.

So if you arrived here asking how to turn off Google AI, aim at the right target. You cannot remove the feature from Google. You can keep it off your own screen. Google offers one official tool for that, a filter that shows plain links only, and a one-time browser setup can open that plain view for every search you run. The second AI feature people mean, AI Mode, needs no fix at all, because it only runs when you open it on purpose.

This guide takes the options in order: the official filter, the default setup for computers, the phone route, the truth about AI Mode and the Search Labs toggles, and the popular tips that no longer work. Every settings path below was checked against Google’s own help pages, and independent tests run in October 2026 confirm the workarounds still hold.

First, know which Google AI you mean

Two different features hide behind the words Google AI, and they behave in opposite ways. The first is the AI Overview. You type a normal search and Google places a written summary above the links, built from pages across the web. It shows up on its own, when Google’s systems decide a summary would help, and you never asked for it. The summary is written by generative AI, the kind of AI that produces new text, and it leans on natural language processing to read both your question and the pages it pulls from.

The second feature is AI Mode. It is a separate tab beside the usual All and Images tabs, and it works like a conversation: you ask a question, get a full AI answer, then ask follow-ups in an Ask anything bar. You only reach it by tapping the tab, opening google.com/ai, or tapping Show more under an AI Overview and typing a follow-up. Nothing about AI Mode runs in the background of a normal search.

The mix-ups do not stop there. Google also answers through pictures now, and our explainer on how AI visual search works covers that third door. For this guide, keep the two main doors separate: the Overview arrives uninvited, so it needs a workaround, while AI Mode waits behind a tab and needs nothing but your habits.

The official answer: there is no off switch

It is worth slowing down here, because most guides get this part wrong or out of date. Google’s position sits in one short section of Google’s help page for AI Overviews, under the heading about showing only web links. The page calls AI Overviews a core feature, compares them to knowledge panels, and states that features cannot be turned off. That single fact shapes every real answer to how to turn off Google AI: the work is about your screen, not about Google’s systems.

The same page names the one control Google does offer: select the Web filter after you perform a search. The filter, Google says, displays only text-based links without features like AI Overviews. That filter is the whole official toolkit for the results page; the rest of the page covers feedback and experiments, not removal. You can rate an overview with a thumbs up or down, which sends feedback but changes nothing on your screen.

What about Search Labs? Labs is Google’s testbed, where new features sit behind toggles while they are still experiments. Google’s help page explains that you can opt out of the AI experiments by turning off AI in Search inside Labs. Read the fine print, though: that toggle governs the testbed. AI Overviews started life as a Labs experiment, then graduated into a standard feature for everyone, and graduated features no longer answer to the Labs switch. The same story applies to the AI Mode entry in Labs, which now covers early access to new AI Mode abilities rather than the tab itself.

Signing out does not rescue you either. AI Overviews appear for signed out users too, because they ride on the results page, not on your account. A private window changes nothing for the same reason. Once you accept the feature stays, the practical question is how little of it you can arrange to see, and that part has good answers.

Option 1: the Web filter, Google’s own fix

The Web filter is the only removal tool Google documents, and it works everywhere Google Search runs. Run your search the normal way. Then look at the row of filters under the search box, the row that starts with All, Images and Videos. Choose Web. If Web does not appear in the row, open More and choose it from that list. The page reloads as a plain list of text links: no AI Overview, and none of the extra boxes that crowd the modern results page either.

Two honest limits come with it. First, the filter lasts for one search. Run a new search and Google returns to the standard page, overview and all, so the filter becomes a habit rather than a setting. Second, the Web view is deliberately bare. It strips the page back to links, which is exactly what most people asking for the old Google want, but you also lose the quick answer boxes that sometimes help, like a calculator result or a sports score.

Even with those limits, learn this one first: it needs no setup, no account and no trust in third party tricks, and it works the same on a work computer, a borrowed laptop or your phone. When a search matters and you want sources instead of a summary, Web is two taps away.

Option 2: make the plain view your default on a computer

If the per-search habit annoys you, a one-time setup fixes it on a computer. Watch what happens when you click the Web filter: Google loads the same results from an address that ends with a short code, udm=14. That code is simply the Web view written as a web address, and you can ask your browser to use it for every search. For most people, this setup is the practical answer to how to turn off Google AI on a desktop or laptop.

Be clear about what this is. Google has never documented the udm=14 code. Writer Ernie Smith spotted and shared it in May 2024, days after AI Overviews launched, and testers checked it as recently as October 2026, when it still opened the Web view every time. It is a workaround, not a setting, and Google can change what the code does at any moment without telling anyone. If it ever stops working, the Web filter from Option 1 still stands.

In Chrome, the setup takes a minute. Open Settings, then Search engine, then Manage search engines and site search. Under Site search, choose Add. Name it Google Web, give it a short shortcut such as web, and paste this address into the URL field: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14. Save it, then open the three dots beside your new entry and choose Make default. From now on, every search you type into Chrome’s address bar opens in the Web view. Google’s Chrome help page documents the Add form itself, including the URL field and the percent sign placeholder for your search words.

Firefox offers the same move. Version 140 added an Add button under the search shortcuts table in Settings, under Search, and the same address works there. Edge keeps an equivalent Add form under Manage search engines in its settings. In every case you can undo the change in seconds by picking the normal Google entry as your default again, so the experiment costs you nothing.

On your phone, the filter is the practical route

Phones change the maths: the custom search engine trick is a desktop tool, and Chrome on Android and iPhone does not offer the Add form the setup needs. So on a phone, how to turn off Google AI comes down to the Web filter, used search by search in the Google app or your mobile browser. The steps match the computer ones: search, find the filter row under the search box, and choose Web, opening More first if Web hides there.

One mobile exception exists. Firefox on Android still lets you add a search engine by hand, in Settings under Search, so you can enter the same udm=14 address and set it as your default there. If plain results matter to you every day and you mostly search on your phone, running your searches through Firefox is the closest thing to a permanent fix that mobile offers today.

AI Mode needs no switch, and here is why

Now for the feature people overthink. AI Mode looks like the bigger change to Search, a full page of AI answers with follow-up questions, yet it asks nothing of you. It opens only when you tap its tab, tap its button in the Google app, open google.com/ai, or follow an AI Overview into a conversation. Leave all of those alone and AI Mode never enters your day. There is no background setting to hunt for because nothing runs until you knock.

Two related points are worth knowing. First, no setting removes the AI Mode tab itself from the results page. Google treats the tab as part of Search furniture, and all you can do is ignore it. Second, the AI Mode toggle inside Search Labs does not control the tab. As Google’s own page on the AI Mode experiment explains, that Labs entry exists to collect feedback on new abilities before they reach the standard AI Mode, and turning it off only leaves the experiment.

If you have used AI Mode and care about the record it keeps, that part is in your hands. AI Mode saves its own history inside Search, and Google lets you open that history and delete entries, or clear them through your Search history in My Activity. The privacy angle mirrors what we found when we looked at what happens to your AI chatbot conversations: the chat stays stored until you remove it, so a quick tidy is worth doing now and then.

Tips that sound right and do not work

Old advice circles fast on this topic, so clear the dead ends out of the way. The most common is the Search Labs switch from 2024 guides, which told readers to toggle off an experiment named AI Overviews and more. That name is gone, folded into the AI in Search toggle, and as the section above explains, Labs toggles govern experiments only. Flipping it changes nothing in normal results today, whatever the old screenshots promise.

Signing out, using a private window and deleting the Google app all fail for the same reason: AI Overviews live on the results page, not in your account or your app drawer, and they show for signed out visitors as well. Adding -ai to the end of a search is a half measure: the minus sign only tells Google to drop pages containing that word, and any effect on the overview is a side effect that comes and goes. Browser extensions that promise to hide AI results do hide the box, but only after Google has built it, and each extension you install can read the pages you visit. Treat them as a last resort, not a fix.

One honest exception rounds out the picture. If you want AI summaries gone completely, with no per-search filter and no workaround to maintain, the only total exit is a different front door. Our roundup of search engines other than Google covers the real alternatives and what each one does with AI in its own results. Many readers land on a split habit instead: Google with the Web view as the everyday default, and an AI tool opened on purpose when a summary is genuinely useful.

That split habit respects the one warning Google itself prints on its help page: overviews can and will make mistakes. A summary is a fine starting point for a trivia question and a poor place to stop for money, health or legal facts. Plain links push you one tap closer to the source, and the source is where the checking happens.

Conclusion

Learning how to turn off Google AI starts with accepting the boundary Google sets: AI Overviews are a core feature with no off switch, and AI Mode has no switch because it never starts on its own. Inside that boundary, your control is real. Use the Web filter whenever a search matters, spend one minute on the custom search engine setup if you search from a computer, and let the Labs toggles and miracle tips go. You will not change Google. You will change what Google shows you, which was the point all along.