How to Stop Google Docs from Automatically Indenting Lists

The Aggressive Bullet Points

Google Docs is programmed to anticipate your formatting needs. One of its most aggressive automation features involves lists. If you type a number followed by a period (e.g., “1.”), a hyphen (“-“), or an asterisk (“*”) at the beginning of a line and press the Spacebar, Google Docs will instantly delete your character and convert the entire paragraph into a formally formatted, indented list item.

While convenient when you actually want to create a bulleted list, it is infuriating when you don’t. Perhaps you are writing a script and want to use hyphens for dialogue, or you are writing a numbered draft where you want the numbers flush against the left margin without any automatic indentation. If you find yourself constantly pressing Ctrl + Z (Undo) to revert Docs’ automatic list formatting, you should disable the feature entirely.

How to Stop Automatic List Formatting

You can turn off automatic list generation in the Preferences menu.

1. Open a document in Google Docs.
2. Look at the top toolbar and click on Tools.
3. Select Preferences from the dropdown menu.
4. In the Preferences window, ensure you are on the General tab.
5. Look down the list of checkboxes for the option labelled Automatically detect lists.
6. Click the checkbox to remove the checkmark.
7. Click the blue OK button to save your changes.

From now on, typing an asterisk or a hyphen at the start of a line will result in exactly that: an asterisk or a hyphen. If you want to create a formal, indented list, you will now need to manually click the Bulleted List or Numbered List icons in the top toolbar.