Checked 2 September 2026

How to turn off AI on Google

Removing AI Overviews — the AI summary above your search results.

Short answer: Google does not let you. There is no setting, no toggle, and no supported way to switch AI Overviews off. That is not an oversight — it is the design, and Google has said so itself.

“There is no direct ‘off’ switch in Google Chrome settings to permanently disable AI Overviews, as they are part of the core Google Search…”
— Platinum Product Expert, official Google Chrome support forum, 28 September 2025.

You are not missing something obvious

The person who started that thread wrote exactly what most people arrive here thinking:

“After reading countless Google Help and Reddit posts, I haven't been able to find any way within my capacity (normal non-tech person…) to turn this feature off. I figured I would just be able to go into settings or something but I can't find any clear way to do it… Is the only way to switch to a different browser?”
— Original poster, 27 September 2025. 767 people marked “I have the same question”. The thread is now locked and replying is disabled.

So if you have spent twenty minutes digging through Search settings looking for the switch: it isn't there. You found the correct answer and assumed you'd made a mistake.

How to turn off AI Overviews on Google: use the Web filter

Google still has a plain-results mode. It's the Web filter, and it returns ten blue links with no AI summary on top. It isn't advertised, and on most searches you won't see the button until you go looking for it.

On a computer

  1. Run your search as normal.
  2. In the row of tabs under the search box — All, Images, Videos, Forums… — click More.
  3. Choose Web.

The AI Overview disappears and you get web results only. We checked this on 2 September 2026 in desktop Chrome: the same query returned an AI Overview on the normal results page and no AI Overview at all under the Web filter.

Make it stick, so you never see one again

The filter resets on every new search. To make plain results your default, point your browser's search bar at the Web-filtered URL:

  1. Open your browser's search-engine settings (in Chrome: Settings → Search engine → Manage search engines and site search → Add).
  2. Name it whatever you like, keyword g, and set the URL to:
    https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14
  3. Set it as your default.

Every search from your address bar now goes straight to plain web results. That udm=14 on the end is the Web filter — the same thing the menu does, written down so your browser can do it for you every time.

Checked 2 September 2026, desktop Chrome. Query with AI Overview: “AI Overview — To boil large eggs straight from the fridge…” · Same query with the Web filter: “Web results”, no AI Overview anywhere on the page.
We run these before we publish them. When Google breaks this one, we'll say so here and tell the list.

What this does and doesn't fix

It removes the AI summary from your results, permanently, on any device where you can set a custom search engine. It does not remove the AI Mode tab from the top of the page — that's a tab you simply don't click. And it does nothing about Gemini elsewhere in your Google account, which is a separate switch.

Get the steps as soon as they hold

One email a month: which methods still work, which ones Google just broke, and what got AI'd next across the rest of your devices.

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