How to Turn Off Google AI Overviews (2026): 8 Methods That Work
The short answer
There is no setting, anywhere in Google Search, that turns AI Overviews off. Google’s own help page for the feature documents what AI Overviews are, which countries and languages they appear in, and how your data is used — it does not list a disable toggle. A Chrome Community Product Expert answer puts it plainly: AI Overviews “are part of the core Google Search experience.”
So everything below is a workaround, and workarounds fall into three groups: change what Google sends you (Web results instead of the default results page), hide the box on the page (browser extensions or a content-blocker filter), or stop using Google for those searches. They differ in how much setup they need and how long they survive Google shipping interface changes.
| Method | Setup | What it removes | Survives Google UI changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Web results as default engine | 2 minutes, once | AI Overviews and every other search module | Yes — server-side, not CSS |
| 2. Web filter tab | None, per search | AI Overviews, shopping, discussions | Yes |
| 3. Hide Google AI Overviews | 1 click | AI Overviews, People-also-ask answers, AI Mode tab | No (needs updates) |
| 4. Bye Bye, Google AI | 1 click + toggles | Your choice of AI Overviews, ads, discussions, videos | No |
| 5. Pre-AI Search | 1 click | AI Overviews + AI-written results | No |
| 6. uBlock Origin filter | Copy one line | AI blocks on Google and other sites | No |
| 7. Labs and Chrome toggles | 1 minute | Only experimental variants | Partial |
| 8. Different search engine | 1 minute | Everything, by leaving | Yes |
Everything on this page was checked against Google’s own help pages and each vendor’s live listing on 2026-11-04. No extension was installed and no search was scored for this page — the claims are what the listings and documentation state, not a hands-on test.
Method 1: Make Web results your default search engine (udm=14)
This is the only fix that removes AI Overviews before they render. Google’s Web results view — the “Web” filter Google introduced in May — is addressable as a URL parameter, udm=14, so you can register it as a search engine and make it the default.
Chrome on Windows or macOS
- Open
chrome://settings/searchEngines(Settings → Search engine → Manage search engines and site search). - Next to Site search, click Add.
- Fill in: Search engine
Google Web, Shortcut@web, URL{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&udm=14. The URL line is the whole trick — leave it exactly as written. - Save, open the menu next to the new entry, and choose Make default.
Chrome on Android or iOS
Open tenbluelinks.org in Chrome, run one Google search, then go to ⋮ → Settings → Search engine and pick Google Web from “Recently visited”. Chrome derives the engine from the page’s OpenSearch description, so the two-step order matters. The site is open source and sends your queries straight to Google, not to itself.
Firefox
Visit the same page in Firefox, right-click the address bar, choose Add “Google Web”, then Settings → Search → set it as default.
What you give up: the Web view has no shopping results, no map pack, no news carousel and no AI panel. Local and product searches get worse. Most people keep a shortcut (@web in the address bar, or the plain Google engine still in the list) and switch when they want the fuller page.
Method 2: Use the Web filter tab (no setup)
On any results page, click Web in the filter row under the search bar — the same row as Images, Videos and News. It reloads the page as Web results. You can also append &udm=14 to any Google search URL by hand.
Per-search, so it is the method for people who do not want to change a default. On desktop it behaves; on mobile the filter row is often hidden behind “Tools” or absent, which is why the default-engine route is more reliable there.
Method 3: Hide Google AI Overviews (extension)
The cleanest of the content blockers, and the one to try first: Hide Google AI Overviews, 1.2K ratings on the Chrome Web Store, 4.1/5 when checked 2026-11-04, open source at github.com/zbarnz/Google_AI_Overviews_Blocker.
It hides AI Overviews at the top of results, the AI-written answers inside “People also ask”, the AI sections of “Things to know”, and the AI Mode tab. The listing states it runs only on Google search pages, collects no data and makes no network requests — which matters, because a blocker that phones home is a worse trade than the AI Overview you were avoiding. A Firefox build exists under the same name on addons.mozilla.org.
Limit: it works by hiding page elements with CSS, so a Google markup change can leave the box visible until the author ships an update. It also does nothing on mobile browsers, where Chrome does not run extensions.
Method 4: Bye Bye, Google AI (extension)
The most-installed option: 100,000 users, 570 ratings, 4.3/5 checked 2026-11-04. Where Method 3 is narrow, this one is a control panel — AI Overviews are hidden by default, and you can additionally hide videos, discussion blocks, shopping blocks, “People also ask” and sponsored results. It also registers a w + space keyword in the address bar for jumping straight to Web results.
Its own listing is honest about the mechanism: it sets those page areas to display: none, and “if Google changes its CSS, we’ll have to update the extension to keep pace.” Same durability caveat as Method 3, plus a bigger blast radius: it can hide normal results blocks, so check what you actually wanted to see after a few days of use.
Method 5: Pre-AI Search (extension)
Smaller (58 ratings, 4.3/5, 10,000 users) and aimed at a different complaint: alongside removing AI Overviews, it filters Google results down to content published before the AI-generated-content era (pre-2023), for people who want the older, human-written web back.
That second feature is the reason to choose it over Methods 3 and 4, and also the reason to skip it: for anything that changed after 2023 — pricing, product names, laws — a pre-2023 result is worse than the AI Overview you were avoiding.
Method 6: uBlock Origin with a community filter list
If you already run uBlock Origin, you do not need a dedicated extension. Add a cosmetic filter under uBlock’s Dashboard → My filters:
google.com##.hdzaWe
That one line is PCWorld’s published recipe and hides the AI Overview container. It is a class name, so the same warning applies as above: when Google renames it, the filter silently stops working until someone publishes the new selector.
For broader coverage, two maintained lists are worth importing under Filter lists → Import:
- Stevoisiak/Stevos-AI-Blocklist — hides AI Overviews and AI Mode buttons on Google, plus generative-AI features on YouTube, Amazon, Reddit and others.
- xolossus/Google-AI-Overview-Hide — a single-purpose list for the Overview box.
The advantage over an extension is that you see the rules and control them. The disadvantage is the same one nobody escapes: it is CSS, and it is maintained by volunteers.
Method 7: Turn off the experiments, not the feature
These two switches get recommended constantly and are worth doing, but neither removes AI Overviews on its own:
- Search Labs. Open the Labs flask icon → Manage → turn off the AI-in-Search experiment. This opts you out of experimental AI variants; the shipped feature stays.
- Chrome’s own AI. In the Chrome address bar open
chrome://settings/aiand switch off History search, powered by AI. That is Chrome’s browsing-history AI, not Search. Useful, unrelated to the Overview box.
Do them for the privacy and clutter, not for the Overviews.
Method 8: Switch search engine
If the goal is “no AI answers”, leaving is the only fix that cannot be broken by a class-name change. DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Brave Search and Kagi all return link lists by default.
Read the fine print, though: DuckDuckGo ships its own AI chat assistant that has to be turned off separately, and Brave and Kagi both sell AI features. “No AI Overviews” is a Google-specific problem; other engines solved it by placing their AI features where you can opt out of them.
What does not work
-aias a negative keyword. It removes pages that mention AI, including the pricing page you wanted, and it does not reliably remove the Overview box itself. Not worth it.- “Enable Web filter” via a Google setting. There is no persistent Web-only setting in Search itself. The default-engine trick in Method 1 is the persistent version of it.
- Browser “turn off AI” toggles in Edge, Opera and Arc. They control that browser’s own AI surfaces, not Google’s results page.
How to disable AI Overview by browser
“Disable AI Overview” is the phrasing people search when they want it gone for good rather than hidden once. The answer depends on which browser you are in, because the two durable routes — Web results as the default engine, and the alternative engine — live in different settings on each one.
Chrome, desktop. Settings → Search engine → Manage search engines and site search → Add, then make the Web entry default (Method 1). This is the closest thing to a disable: the page arrives without the Overview, so there is nothing to hide.
Chrome, Android. Same idea, different menu: open tenbluelinks.org, run one Google search, then ⋮ → Settings → Search engine → Google Web. Chrome only offers the engine in “Recently visited”, so the order of those two steps matters. Chrome on iOS follows the same pattern.
Firefox. Right-click the address bar on tenbluelinks.org and add “Google Web”, then Settings → Search → default. If you already use uBlock Origin, the filter in Method 6 avoids touching the default engine at all.
Edge and Safari. Both inherit the search engine from the same custom-engine mechanism; Chrome’s steps apply to Edge almost word for word. Safari needs an extension, so on macOS Method 3’s Safari-adjacent alternatives do not exist — the Web filter or a different engine is the practical route.
Any browser, mobile. Chrome for Android and iOS do not run extensions, so “disable” on a phone means either the Web filter or the default-engine switch. There is no extension route, and no setting inside Google Search itself.
How to hide AI Overview without changing browser settings
Hiding and disabling are different jobs, and the search demand splits the same way. If the goal is to hide the box while keeping Google’s normal results page — shopping, maps, “People also ask” — then a content blocker is the right tool and the default-engine route is the wrong one, because it removes those blocks too.
The hiding options, in order of how little they disturb the page: the Web filter tab (Method 2) hides nothing but changes the whole page for that search; Hide Google AI Overviews (Method 3) hides the AI blocks and leaves the rest of the layout intact; Bye Bye, Google AI (Method 4) hides more, including ads and shopping, if that is what you want; the uBlock filter (Method 6) does the same with rules you can read and edit.
What hiding cannot do is survive a redesign. Every hiding method depends on the element names Google ships today, so the honest expectation is that it works until it does not, and then someone publishes an updated selector. Disabling, by contrast, survives because it changes the response instead of the rendering.
If you own a website, the switch runs the other way
Google did ship an off switch — for publishers. Search Console → Settings → Search generative AI lets a site decide whether its content can appear in, and help ground, AI Overviews, AI Mode and AI Overviews in Discover. Google announced it in June 2026 and the post was updated at the end of August 2026.
Opting out does not remove your site from ordinary search results, and it does not reduce the AI Overviews a reader sees — it only takes your pages out of the AI answer. For a publisher the trade is visibility inside AI answers versus control over how the content is used. It is the only setting in this article that Google actually built.
The part that keeps moving
On 2026-11-03, Search Engine Roundtable reported Google testing the removal of the AI Mode button from the search bar (source) — a reminder that the interface these workarounds target is still being reshuffled. Anything CSS-based on this page needs re-checking after a big Google redesign; the Web-results engine and the alternative-engine routes do not.
Which one to pick
- Set it once and forget it: Method 1 (udm=14 as default), plus a
@webshortcut for when you want the full page. - Want the box gone but keep Google’s layout: Method 3, or Method 6 if you already run uBlock.
- Want ads and shopping gone too: Method 4.
- On a phone: Method 1 or Method 2 — extension-based fixes do not exist on Chrome mobile.
- You publish: the Search Console control is the only switch Google gives you, so decide it deliberately rather than by default.
Checked 2026-11-04 against Google’s AI Overviews help page, the Chrome Web Store and addons.mozilla.org listings cited above, Google’s June 2026 publisher-controls announcement, and Search Engine Roundtable’s 2026-11-03 report. Extension user counts and ratings are the vendors’ own store figures and change daily. Extension picks are compared side by side in AIListScout’s best AI blockers roundup.