There’s no official master switch. The closest thing to permanent is setting your browser’s default search engine togoogle.com/search?q=%s&udm=14, which forces plain web results on every query automatically. Everything else on this page is a workaround with a different durability profile — pick based on your device and how much setup you’re willing to do once.
Quick answers
- No official Google toggle exists anymore — the Search Labs opt-out was pulled for most accounts during 2025–2026.
- The Web filter strips AI Overview from a single search with one click, no setup.
- udm=14 as your default search engine is the most durable non-extension method on desktop.
- Mobile Chrome needs a workaround site to register the parameter, since there’s no field to type it manually.
- Safari can’t run the udm=14 trick at all — it needs a content blocker or a non-Google default search engine instead.
- Brave is the only browser with a native, built-in AI-search filter rather than a workaround.
- AI Mode is a separate feature from AI Overview, and killing one doesn’t touch the other.
Can You Turn Off Google AI Overview in Search Labs?
For nearly everyone, no. Google phased out the AI Overview opt-out in Search Labs as the feature graduated from experiment to permanent fixture. It’s worth a quick check anyway, since the rollout wasn’t uniform — some accounts kept access longer than others.
Sign in and visit labs.google.com, or look for the beaker icon on a results page. Toggle “AI Overviews” off if it’s listed and restart the app. If neither the icon nor the listing shows up, your account has already lost the option — skip to the Web filter or the udm=14 method below, since they work regardless of what Labs shows you.
One caveat: even on the accounts that still show the toggle, switching it off doesn’t guarantee AI Overview vanishes everywhere. It thins out the frequency rather than blocking the feature outright.
How to Remove Google AI Overview for One Search
Click the Web tab under the search bar (or find it under “More” on some queries). Google reloads the same results with AI Overview, video carousels, and other rich modules stripped out, leaving plain text links. It’s per-search, so the next query starts fresh with AI Overview back on.
Google’s own Search Help documentation confirms the Web filter is the sanctioned way to see “only text-based links without features like AI Overviews” — it’s a real Google feature, not a workaround someone reverse-engineered. That matters, because it’s the only method on this list Google built on purpose for exactly this complaint.
A second one-off trick: tack -AI onto your query, as in best trail shoes -AI. It hijacks Google’s exclusion operator rather than flipping any real toggle, so treat it as a fast, imperfect stopgap — and skip it entirely on searches where “AI” is a term you actually want results for, like anything about AI tools or companies, since you’d be filtering out relevant pages along with the summary.
How Do You Make the Fix Permanent on Desktop?
Set your browser’s default search engine URL to https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14. It’s the same instruction the Web tab sends, just applied to every search instead of requiring a click each time.
- Chrome/Edge/Brave: Settings → Search engine → Manage search engines → Add, paste the URL, set as default.
- Firefox: Settings → Search → Add search engine, same URL.
This holds up better than extensions because it doesn’t depend on Google’s page layout staying static — it depends on a URL parameter that’s worked consistently since the Web filter launched in May 2024. Two third-party sites, tenbluelinks.org and udm14.com, do the same thing as one-click portals if you’d rather not touch browser settings at all; both route the search through their own page first, so skip them for anything sensitive and use the custom-engine setup instead.
Why udm=14 Stops Working
Two things usually break it. The custom search engine save doesn’t always stick — some browsers alter the %s placeholder or truncate the query string during entry, dropping &udm=14 without warning.
Check the saved engine’s URL field after saving. If the parameter’s missing, delete the entry and re-add it rather than trying to edit it in place.
The second cause is Google itself. udm=14 isn’t an official setting — it’s undocumented, and its effect varies by query type, region, device, and whether you’re signed in, so the same URL can suppress AI Overview on one search and not the next.
A fast way to tell which problem you have: search something, then check the address bar once the page loads. No udm=14 in the URL means the browser dropped it — redo the setup. The parameter’s there, but AI Overview still shows anyway means it’s Google’s inconsistency, not a setup error, and no browser-side fix solves that.
How to Turn Off Google AI Overview in Chrome for Android and iPhone
Neither Android nor iPhone Chrome gives you a field to type a custom search engine URL, which breaks the desktop method outright. The workaround: visit tenbluelinks.org or udm14.com, run any search from that page, then open Chrome’s three-dot menu → Settings → Search engine. Under “Recently visited,” an entry along the lines of “Google Web” appears — select it, and Chrome adopts the udm=14 version of Google as default going forward.
On a phone, you can also just add &udm=14 manually to the end of the URL bar after any search and hit Go — slower than the recently-visited trick, but it needs no third-party site at all.
How to Turn Off Google AI Overview in Safari
Not natively, and not through the tenbluelinks workaround either — Safari doesn’t support custom search-engine URL parameters on Mac, iPhone, or iPad. Three real options exist instead: install a content blocker from the App Store that targets AI Overview elements and enable it under Settings → Safari → Extensions; switch Safari’s default search engine to DuckDuckGo or Ecosia, which removes AI Overview by definition since it’s Google-only; or, on Mac specifically, install a full browser extension, since desktop Safari supports them even though iOS Safari doesn’t.
Google also tends to serve AI Overview less aggressively to non-Google browsers generally, so daily-driving Safari or Firefox can quietly reduce how often you see it even with no setup at all. That’s an allocation side effect on Google’s end, not a setting — treat it as a mild bonus, not a fix.
How to Disable Google AI Overview in Brave Browser
Brave Search already had its own AI toggle before the Anti-AI filter existed. Click the gear icon in the top right of a Brave Search results page and switch off “Answer with AI.” That kills the AI summary specifically on Brave’s own index, separate from the broader filter.
Run both settings together, and you get the cleanest coverage. The Content Filtering toggle strips AI elements from other engines you might route through Brave; the gear-icon toggle keeps Brave’s own results free of them too.
One catch worth flagging for readers: the toggle isn’t airtight. Brave’s own bug tracker has a running thread of users reporting the AI summary box or its icons resurfacing after being switched off, so treat “Answer with AI” off as mostly reliable rather than guaranteed
Google AI Mode vs AI Overview: What’s the Difference?
No — confusing the two is the most common reason people think a fix “didn’t work.” AI Overview is the automatic summary box that appears above normal results without you asking for it.
AI Mode is a separate, opt-in tab next to Web and Images that turns Google into a full conversational search assistant, and it only activates if you click into it or follow a “Keep exploring” prompt.
There’s no setting to remove the AI Mode tab from the page — it sits there unused unless you tap it, so ignoring it is functionally the same as disabling it. What AI Mode does under the hood is worth knowing regardless: Google’s own documentation describes it running on a query fan-out technique, splitting one question into several subtopics and searching each simultaneously before merging the results into a single answer. That’s a genuinely different retrieval process from AI Overview’s single-pass summary, which is part of why disabling one has zero effect on the other.
The udm=14 method sidesteps both AI Overview and AI Mode’s entry points in the same move, which is one reason it’s the more durable of the two main fixes above. For publishers rather than searchers, that split retrieval process is also why tracking rankings alone no longer tells the full visibility story — a page can rank well in classic Search while still going unseen inside AI Mode’s fanned-out sub-searches.
Best Ways to Turn Off Google AI Overview (Compared)
| Method | Effort | Durability | What You Lose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web filter tab | None, per search | Resets every new query | Drops video previews and other rich modules along with AI Overview |
-AI search operator | None, per search | Not guaranteed to trigger | Can exclude genuinely relevant results on AI-related queries |
udm=14 default search engine | One-time setup | High — holds until Google retires the parameter | Doesn’t work in Safari; strips other rich modules too |
| tenbluelinks.org / udm14.com | One-time setup | High, same mechanism as udm=14 | Routes your search through a third-party page first |
| Brave Anti-AI Search Filters | One-time setup | High — official, maintained setting | Brave-only; doesn’t help in Chrome or Safari |
| Content blocker (Safari) | One-time setup | Moderate | Hides visually; Google still generates the summary server-side |
| Switch to DuckDuckGo/Ecosia | Low | Complete | Loses Google’s index and other Google-only features |
| Browser extension (e.g. Hide Google AI Overviews) | Low | Fragile | Breaks silently whenever Google changes its page’s CSS structure |
If losing Google’s index isn’t a dealbreaker, switching your default search engine entirely is the only option here that’s complete rather than partial — everything else is a filter layered on top of a feature Google intends to keep running. That tension is part of a bigger pattern worth naming: as more of the open web’s traffic gets absorbed into on-page AI answers instead of outbound clicks, publishers face a shakier incentive to keep producing the source material AI Overview summarizes — a dynamic that’s reshaping how sites approach visibility now that ranking and AI citation are tracked as two different scorecards.
FAQs
Q. Can you permanently turn off Google AI Overview?
No. Google does not provide an official way to permanently disable Google AI Overview for most users. The closest long-term workaround is setting your browser’s default search engine togoogle.com/search?q=%s&udm=14, which loads Google’s Web results automatically and bypasses AI Overview on supported browsers.
Q. How do I turn off Google AI Overview on iPhone?
There is no iPhone-wide setting to disable Google AI Overview. If available, check Search Labs in the Google app, adjust Search assistance or Gemini settings in Chrome for iOS, or use a Safari content blocker. Since Safari doesn’t support the udm=14 search engine trick, switching to a non-Google search engine is the most reliable alternative.
Q. How do I disable Google AI Overview in Chrome?
- On desktop Chrome, add a custom search engine using
google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14and set it as your default under Settings → Search engine → Manage search engines. - On Android, the same method works if your browser supports it. On Chrome for iPhone, use the recently visited search engine workaround described in this guide.
Q. How do I hide Google AI Overview for just one search?
Click the Web tab below the Google search bar. Google reloads the search using plain web results without displaying Google AI Overview. This change only applies to the current search and resets on your next query.
Q. Does Google AI Overview run in the background?
No. Google AI Overview is generated only when an eligible Google search is performed. It does not continuously run in the background. Features such as AI Mode and Gemini are separate products that activate only when you use them.
Q. Can I disable all Google AI features?
No. There is currently no account-wide setting to disable all Google AI features. AI Overview, AI Mode, and Gemini are integrated into different Google products. If you want to avoid AI-generated search results completely, using a non-Google search engine is the only complete solution.
Q. Does Incognito mode turn off Google AI Overview?
No. Incognito or private browsing does not disable Google AI Overview. Google decides whether to display AI Overview based primarily on the search query, not whether you’re signed in or using private browsing.
Q. Will the udm=14 workaround keep working?
Google has not announced whether it will continue supporting the udm=14 parameter. It has remained functional since the Web filter launched, but because Google has never officially documented it as a permanent feature, it could change in the future.
Q. Is Google AI Overview the same as Gemini?
No. Google AI Overview and Gemini are related but different. Gemini is Google’s AI model and assistant, while Google AI Overview is the AI-generated summary shown at the top of some Google Search results. AI Overview uses Gemini technology, but the two features are not the same.
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| Disclaimer: We regularly review and update this guide to reflect the latest changes to Google Search, AI Overview, browser settings, and related features. However, Google can roll out updates without notice, which means some menus, options, or workarounds may change before we have a chance to revise this article. If you notice something different, we recommend checking Google’s latest documentation or your browser’s official help pages alongside this guide for the most up-to-date information. |
