The Blue Underline
Google Docs is designed to seamlessly integrate with the broader web. Because of this, it includes an aggressive autocorrect feature: the moment you type anything that resembles a web address (like “google.com” or “example.org”) and press the spacebar, Docs will automatically convert that text into a clickable, blue, underlined hyperlink. While convenient when drafting a list of resources, it is incredibly annoying if you are writing technical documentation, software code, or formatting a bibliography where the raw text is required, and the blue hyperlink breaks your document’s visual style.
Disabling Automatic Hyperlinks
To retain control over your document’s formatting and stop Google Docs from automatically converting your typed URLs and email addresses into clickable links, you must adjust the core autocorrect preferences.
Open your Google Docs document. Navigate to the top menu bar and click on Tools. From the drop-down menu, select Preferences. A dialogue box will appear in the center of the screen. Ensure you are looking at the General tab. Within the list of checkbox options on this tab, locate the setting labelled Automatically detect links. Click the checkbox to remove the checkmark, turning the feature completely off. Click the blue OK button at the bottom. From this point forward, when you type a web address, it will remain as standard, unformatted text. (Note: If you have an existing link you want to remove, you must still click on it and select the “Remove link” icon).