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How To Disable Gmail's Annoying New 'Smart Compose' Predictive Typing Feature (vortex.com)

"I've seen this 'Smart Compose' feature described publicly with a range of adjectives," writes Lauren Weinstein, "including intrusive, wonderful, invasive, creepy, accurate, loony, mistaken, helpful, misguided -- well, you get the point, opinions are all over the map...." My foundational complaint here isn't that Google deployed Smart Compose, but rather that they enabled it by default without providing users even basic related information, including the all important "How the hell do I turn this damned thing off?" -- the very question filling my inbox of late!

So here's how you turn it off. It's easy, IF you know how.

One anonymous reader has another solution. "I'm just using Gmail in HTML-only mode now. Its actually far more usable than their new crap and I'm quite fond of the older look anyway." You could also just stop using Gmail -- but Weinstein thinks it's easier to disable the "Smart Compose feature.

"With the understanding that Google has great AI and is itching to use it whenever and wherever possible, I don't really need it analyzing my email drafts as I type them. At least in my case, its proposed wordings are nearly always -- what's the technical term? -- oh yes, WRONG.

"And the predictions intrusively and continuously interrupt my flow of typing as each one needs to be individually bypassed."

2 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Pay for your email by davide+marney · · Score: 3, Informative

    I pay for Goggle Apps and these annoying features are, indeed, enabled by default.

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  2. Settings > General > Write Suggestions Off by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 5, Informative

    tl;dr do: Settings > General > Write Suggestions Off > Save
    You would think that page criticizing Google would make it easy to find in this lengthy text how to switch that feature off...

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