You’ve probably noticed that Google search looks a lot different than it used to. Type in almost any question these days and you’ll get a wall of AI-generated text before a single actual link. That’s Google AI Overview, and while Google doesn’t offer a real off switch, there are a couple of solid workarounds that let you disable Google AI Overview on both desktop and Android.
Why bother turning it off? AI Overview pulls information from across the web and summarizes it for you, which sounds convenient. The problem is it’s not always right. A recent analysis by AI startup Oumi found that even running on Google’s latest Gemini model, AI Overview gets things wrong roughly 9-10% of the time. At Google’s scale, that adds up to hundreds of millions of bad answers every day. For casual low-stakes queries it might not matter much, but if you’re researching something important, trusting that summary without clicking the actual sources is a risk.
How to Disable Google AI Overview on Desktop
The most reliable method on desktop is changing your default search engine to a custom URL that tells Google to always show traditional web results. The key is a URL parameter called udm=14, which forces Google into its “Web” filter mode and strips out AI Overview entirely.
Here’s how to set it up in Chrome:
- Open Chrome and go to Settings
- Click Search engine in the left sidebar
- Select Manage search engines and site search
- Under “Site search,” click Add
- Name it something like “Google Web”
- In the URL field, paste:
- Click Add, then find your new entry in the list
- Click the three-dot menu next to it and select Make default
Every search you run from the address bar will now skip AI Overview automatically.
There’s also a quicker one-off method if you don’t want to change settings. After running any Google search, look for the Web tab in the filter bar just below the search box. Clicking it removes AI Overview for that search. It’s not permanent, but it works instantly with no setup needed.
A note on the Reddit trick: You may have seen a tip going around suggesting you add &tbs=1 to your Google search URL instead. Some users report it works similarly and also brings back classic features like the dictionary box. It’s a community-discovered workaround with no official documentation, so its reliability may vary.
How to Disable Google AI Overview on Android
Mobile is trickier since Chrome for Android doesn’t let you manually type a custom search URL the same way desktop does. The easiest solution is using a site called tenbluelinks.org, which is specifically built to handle this.
- Open Chrome on your Android device and visit tenbluelinks.org
- Run any Google search to trigger the setup
- Tap the three-dot menu in the top-right corner
- Go to Settings, then Search engine
- Select Google Web from the “Recently visited” section
That’s it. Your Android searches will now route through the udm=14 parameter automatically, keeping AI Overview out of your results.
Worth knowing: none of these methods truly “turn off” AI Overview at the account level. They work by routing your searches through Google’s Web filter, which excludes AI summaries by design. If Google ever changes how that filter works, these workarounds could break. For now though, they’re the best options available, and they’ve been reliable since Google’s AI Overview feature expanded significantly in 2024.
If you’re curious about where all this is heading, Google has been pushing AI Overview further into search with features like AI Mode. These workarounds are going to matter more, not less, over time.