The Intrusive Mentions
Google Docs is deeply integrated into the Google Workspace ecosystem. To facilitate collaboration, it features an aggressive “Smart Chip” system. By default, if you type the “@” symbol followed by a few letters (e.g., “@John” or “@Meeting”), Docs instantly halts your typing and pops open a massive dropdown menu, trying to automatically link to a contact’s email address, a calendar event, or a file in your Google Drive. While this is fantastic for project management, it is incredibly annoying if you are writing a technical manual about email formatting, drafting a social media post, or writing code where the “@” symbol is used frequently as plain text.
Disabling the @ Menu
To retain control over your keystrokes and stop Google Docs from automatically creating Smart Chips and opening the dropdown menu every time you type the “@” symbol, you must disable the feature in the preferences.
Open any Google Doc. Navigate to the top menu bar and click on Tools. Scroll down the dropdown menu and select Preferences. A new dialogue box will pop up on your screen. Ensure you are on the General tab on the left. Scan down the list of checkboxes until you find the option explicitly named Show Smart chips (or “Show smart compose suggestions” depending on your Workspace configuration). By default, this box is checked. Click the box to uncheck it. Click the blue OK button to save your changes. From now on, when you type the “@” symbol, it will simply appear as a normal text character without triggering the intrusive search menu.