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How to disable Smart Compose, text suggestions,prevent tracking, and Smart Reply in Gmail

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Today we have a huge queue of email services, but even though most of us rely on Gmail, the reason is that Gmail has lots of advanced features, including the favorite “Smart Compose.” This is the only feature that lets you start writing an email with some AI-based suggestions. More specifically, Gmail’s Smart Compose uses machine learning to understand human behavior and suggest the next best phrase to ease writing emails in a minute.

Moreover, I agree that even though Smart Compose has a lot of capabilities, people still want to turn it off. This is because it distracts you a lot when you know what you want to say. Sometimes it may not accurately predict the words that you want and has other similar downsides. As you know, Smart Compose is enabled by default, so you need to disable it. But people don’t know how to do that. So, let’s have a quick discussion about how to disable Gmail Smart Compose.

How to turn off or disable the Smart Compose and Smart Reply (predictive text suggestions) features and prevent tracking in Gmail and Docs?

Google believes in saving time and working effectively in less time than possible. But for those executives whose primary job is to write emails to business clients, it seems hectic and time-consuming. The reason is that the user needs to write a complete email without ease. For that, Gmail introduced Smart Compose, a feature that gives writing suggestions using machine learning. With this feature, instead of writing a complete sentence, the user can tap on Smart Compose’s suggestion and save a lot of time.

However, in any case, if the user doesn’t want suggestions, then they can ignore them using the tab. But ignoring the Smart Compose suggestion is not the solution for users who don’t want Smart Compose. I know you are wondering why some people don’t want such an AI-based feature. The major reason is that it does not give accurate suggestions and can result in writing the wrong content. So, here we come to let you know how to disable Gmail Smart Compose. See, Gmail is available on Android, iOS, and desktop, so below, we are sharing instructions for each of them.

For Smartphone

Gmail’s app has the keen feature to adjust the smart compose feature from within the app itself. Here, either you can enable smart compose or disable it. Although it is by default enabled by Gmail to ease your experience, if you have decided to disable it, then look out for these steps to do so.

Note: The Gmail app has such uniformity that it has the same navigation and settings arrangement on both Android and iOS. So, you can use these instructions on both platforms.

  • Open the Gmail app.
  • Tap on the hamburger menu.
  • Click on settings and select your Gmail account.
  • Scroll down and unmark the smart compose box option.
  • That’s all. From now on, you won’t get such annoying suggestions.

For the desktop,

Being shifted to the big screen, it is obvious that navigation and settings are differently placed here. On a desktop, you cannot do the steps you have taken on the smartphone. But disabling Gmail’s smart compose is also needed, so here are the instructions to do that.

  • Visit Gmail.com in your browser.
  • Then log in to your Google account.
  •  The next tab on your profile picture appears in the top right corner.
  • Click on See All Settings and get into the General tab.
  • Now scroll down and unmark the checkbox for writing suggestions.
  • Lastly, scroll down, save the changes, and you are done.

Besides that, in any case, if you want to enable that same feature, then do the same steps except unmark the writing suggestion option and mark it as enabled. This is the feature initially available in Gmail, but later on, in 2020, Google introduced it to Google Docs. And the same as the inaccurate suggestion problem, in documents, the same problem exists. Here also, you can disable this feature; just follow these steps, and you are done.

  • Simply open a file in your document.
  • Then, at the top, click on Tools >> Preferences.
  • Now click Show smart compose suggestions.
  • Lastly, click OK, and you are done.

Apart from that, there is one more AI feature Gmail has called Smart Response. This ultimately does help in replying to received emails using machine learning, so that the user can reply to anyone with a single click instead of writing the complete sentence. In any case, if you want to turn this feature off, then you can do that from any place, as the smart reply feature will be placed beyond the smart compose feature. If you still have queries, then ask them below.

  • Open the Gmail app.
  • Then go to Settings.
  • Under the complete settings, scroll down and find the smart reply option.
  • From there, unmark the checkbox for a smart reply.
  • Lastly, save the changes, and you are done.

Conclusively, smart compose and smart reply are the two key features with which we can write and reply to emails with AI and save a lot of time. I agree with the writing suggestion; there are a few inaccuracies that are expected to be improved in the coming time. Now it’s up to you whether you can manage with Smart Compose or not. If not, then disable it, as we did. Mentioned above. Or if you want to enable it, then do the same steps and mark the checkbox for smart compose instead of unmarking. So, these are the relevant things about it. If any user still has queries, then ask them below.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. Does Gmail’s Smart Compose charge any amount?

Ans. No, this feature is completely free to use.

Q2. Does Gmail by default enable smart compose?

Ans. Yes, Gmail by default offers you the option to use AI writing suggestions.

Q3. Which other applications have Smart Compose compared to Gmail?

Ans. Google Docs will have smart compose added to it in 2020.

Q4. Is there any difference between smart compose and smart reply?

Ans. Smart Compose is to write emails with AI suggestions, and Smart Reply is to reply to the received mail.