The Hover Distraction
Google Docs integrates heavily with the rest of the Google Workspace ecosystem through a feature called “Smart Chips.” Whenever you paste a URL into a document and press the spacebar, Docs converts it into a clickable link. If you then hover your mouse cursor over that link for even a fraction of a second, a massive preview card pops up on your screen. This tooltip might show a thumbnail of the website, a summary of a linked Google Drive file, or an option to convert the link into a pill-shaped chip. While occasionally useful, this large popup covers up the text immediately above the link, making it incredibly difficult to read and edit densely hyperlinked documents.
Disabling the Previews
To maintain a clean reading environment and disable the intrusive link preview tooltips in Google Docs, you must adjust your viewer preferences.
Open any Google Doc. Look at the primary menu bar across the top of the screen and click on Tools. From the dropdown menu, select Preferences. A dialogue box will appear in the center of your screen. By default, it opens to the “General” tab. Look down the list of checkbox options for one explicitly labelled Show link details. Click this checkbox to completely uncheck it. Finally, click the blue OK button to save the changes. Moving forward, when you hover your mouse cursor over a blue hyperlink in your text, absolutely nothing will happen. The massive preview card will not appear, allowing you to read the surrounding text without obstruction.