How to Turn Off Smart Compose in Gmail

Smart Compose is Gmail's predictive-text feature. As you type a reply, grey inline suggestions appear after the cursor — press Tab to accept one, or keep typing to dismiss it. For casual correspondence it can speed things up. For professionals who write to clients where every word is deliberate, it is a constant intrusion: it autocompletes the wrong name, drifts into a register that does not match the relationship, or simply breaks concentration at the wrong moment.

If you have been searching for how to turn off Smart Compose in Gmail, the fix takes under a minute. But there is a detail almost every guide misses: Smart Compose and Smart Compose personalisation are two separate toggles, and which ones you disable depends on what specifically bothers you. Turning off only one may not solve the problem. This guide covers both settings, on desktop and mobile, and what to do when the toggle does not seem to hold.

The short answer#

On Gmail desktop: click the gear icon, select See all settings, open the General tab, scroll to the Smart Compose section, and choose Writing suggestions off. Directly below it is Smart Compose personalisation — set that to off as well. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page. The completions stop the moment you close the Settings panel.

On the Gmail mobile app: tap the three-line menu icon, scroll down and tap Settings, tap the account you want to change, and toggle Smart Compose off. Repeat for each account if you have more than one signed in.

That is the whole procedure. The rest of this guide explains why the two desktop settings are separate, what each one controls, and what to do when the setting does not stick.

Before you start: two settings, not one#

Most how-to guides treat Smart Compose as a single on/off switch. Gmail actually gives you two distinct controls on desktop, and understanding what each one does is the difference between fixing the problem and being confused when it persists.

Smart Compose is the prediction engine itself. It watches what you type in real time and suggests completions using a mix of general language models and contextual signals from the current thread. Turn this off, and the grey inline suggestions disappear entirely. Pressing Tab will no longer append anything.

Smart Compose personalisation is what feeds the engine your own writing patterns. When personalisation is on, Gmail stores how you phrase things — your preferred greetings, your sign-offs, the way you tend to close out a request — and uses those patterns to skew its completions toward your voice. Turn personalisation off without turning Smart Compose off and you still get completions, but they will be generic rather than shaped around your habits.

The common scenario: completions are putting words in your mouth that do not match how you talk to a specific client, or they are autocompleting a name from a previous email that has nothing to do with the current thread. Turning off Smart Compose entirely is the cleanest fix. If you only object to Gmail storing and using your writing history, turn off personalisation but leave the prediction engine running.

How to turn off Smart Compose in Gmail on desktop#

The controls live in Gmail's General settings. The path is the same whether you use Gmail at mail.google.com or through a Google Workspace account, with one exception noted in the callout below.

1. 1

   Open Gmail Settings

   Sign in to Gmail and click the gear icon in the top-right corner of the inbox. In the quick-settings panel that opens on the right, click See all settings. This takes you to the full settings page.

2. 2

   Go to the General tab

   The settings page opens on the General tab by default. If it opens on a different tab, click General at the top of the settings navigation.

3. 3

   Find the Smart Compose section and turn off writing suggestions

   Scroll down the General tab until you see a section labeled Smart Compose. Under Writing suggestions, select Writing suggestions off. The radio button to the left of that option will become active.

4. 4

   Turn off Smart Compose personalisation

   Immediately below Writing suggestions is another field: Smart Compose personalisation. Select Personalisation off. The two controls are adjacent but independent — you must change each one deliberately.

5. 5

   Save your changes

   Scroll to the bottom of the General settings page and click Save Changes. Gmail will reload. When the compose window reopens, no grey completions will appear as you type.

How to turn off Smart Compose in the Gmail mobile app#

The Gmail apps for Android and iOS share nearly the same path to this setting. One thing to know before you start: the mobile app lists settings per account. If you have two or three Google accounts in the app, you need to turn Smart Compose off in each one individually.

1. 1

   Open the Gmail app and go to Settings

   Tap the three-line menu icon (hamburger icon) at the top left of the inbox. Scroll down in the sidebar and tap Settings.

2. 2

   Select the account you want to change

   The Settings screen lists each Google account signed into the app. Tap the account for which you want to turn off Smart Compose. If you have only one account, tap it.

3. 3

   Find Smart Compose and toggle it off

   On the account settings screen, scroll down to the General section. Tap Smart Compose and toggle it off. On some versions of the app the toggle appears directly on the account settings screen rather than on a separate screen after tapping.

4. 4

   Repeat for additional accounts

   Go back to the account list and repeat steps 2 and 3 for any other accounts. There is no global toggle that applies across all accounts in one step.

Where each platform puts the Smart Compose controls#

The table below shows exactly where to find the controls on each surface and what is available. Refer to this if you are switching between devices and cannot remember where the setting lives.

What to do when Smart Compose keeps coming back#

If you have turned the toggle off and the grey completions still appear, one of the following is usually the cause.

Stale browser cache. Gmail is a web application, and a cached version of the interface can persist after you save settings. Hard-reload the Gmail tab (Shift + F5 on Windows, Command + Shift + R on Mac) or open Gmail in a private or incognito window to test. If the completions are gone in the private window, clear your browser cache for gmail.com and the setting will hold in your normal session.

The wrong account. Smart Compose is per-account, not per-browser. If you have two or more Google accounts signed in and you changed the setting on the wrong one, completions will persist for the other. Check the account indicator at the top-right of the Gmail interface to confirm which account the active tab is using, then go back into settings.

A browser extension is injecting its own suggestions. Several AI writing extensions for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox add inline completions that look almost identical to Smart Compose but are controlled entirely by the extension, not by Gmail's settings. If completions persist after you have turned Smart Compose off, temporarily disable your writing-related extensions and reload Gmail. If the completions stop, re-enable extensions one at a time to identify which one is responsible.

A Workspace admin has locked the setting. As covered in the callout above, a Workspace administrator can prevent individual users from changing Smart Compose preferences. If the toggles were greyed out when you tried to change them, your settings save did not apply and the admin setting takes precedence.

An open compose window on mobile. On the Gmail mobile app, the toggle takes effect the next time you open a compose window. If you had a draft open when you changed the setting, close the compose window and reopen it.

If tone drift is the real problem#

Smart Compose predicts your next few words as you type. That is a fundamentally different thing from a draft that arrives already written in your voice, shaped for the specific person you are corresponding with, based on context you defined — not patterns Gmail inferred from your sent folder.

If the reason you turned Smart Compose off is tone drift — the autocomplete inserting words or phrases that do not match how you actually talk to this client — there is a different approach. AI Emaily generates full draft replies from a user-set Context brain and per-client profiles. You define your voice and relationships explicitly; the draft arrives ready to review before anything is sent. Nothing is autocompleted mid-sentence, and every draft goes through approval before it leaves your outbox. We build AI Emaily. If you are triaging a full inbox rather than composing one message at a time, the details and trial are at aiemaily.com/pricing.