The Smart Canvas Intrusion
Google Docs features a rich integration system known as “Smart Canvas.” One of the core features of Smart Canvas is “Smart Chips.” When you type the “@” symbol, Google Docs automatically opens a drop-down menu suggesting people, files, dates, and calendar events. Furthermore, if you paste a URL into a document and press the spacebar or Enter, Docs will often automatically convert that plain text link into a visually prominent “Smart Chip” displaying the webpage title and a small icon. While these chips are great for collaborative, internal workspace documents, they can severely clutter standard, formal documents, ruining the clean look of traditional citations or plain-text URL lists.
Managing Smart Chip Preferences
To maintain a clean, traditional document layout and stop Google Docs from automatically creating Smart Chips when you type “@” or paste links, you must adjust the application’s formatting preferences.
Open any Google Docs document. In the top menu bar, click on Tools and select Preferences from the drop-down list. A new dialog box will appear. Click on the tab labeled Smart Canvas (this tab was added specifically to manage these new integration features). Here, you will see a list of checkboxes controlling automatic chip generation. To stop URLs from converting, uncheck the box labeled Automatically convert URLs to smart chips. To stop the dropdown menu from appearing when you type an “at” symbol, uncheck Show smart chips when you type @. Click the blue OK button to save your changes. Going forward, your pasted links will remain as standard blue, underlined text, and the “@” symbol will act as a normal character.