The Floating Interruption
Google Docs features a robust collaboration system built around comments and suggestions. If someone shares a document with you and grants you “Commenter” access (rather than full Editor access), every keystroke you make is automatically tracked as a suggestion, appearing as brightly colored text. Simultaneously, a large, floating “Suggestion Box” instantly pops up on the right-hand margin of the screen, detailing exactly what you changed and waiting for the document owner to approve or reject it. While this is the intended behavior for peer review, if you are simply trying to read a document and accidentally tap the spacebar, the sudden appearance of the suggestion UI is jarring and distracts from the reading experience.
Switching to Viewing Mode
To stop Google Docs from automatically generating suggestions and showing the associated pop-up boxes the moment you touch the keyboard, you must change your interaction mode with the document.
If you have Commenter access, you cannot turn off the suggestion tracking itself—that is enforced by the document owner. However, you can change your local view to prevent accidental edits from triggering the UI. Look at the top right corner of the Google Docs toolbar, just below the blue “Share” button. You will see a button that likely says Suggesting (with a green pencil or comment icon). Click this button to reveal a dropdown menu. Change the mode from “Suggesting” to Viewing (with an eye icon). In Viewing mode, the document becomes entirely read-only for you. You can scroll and read freely, and accidental keystrokes will be completely ignored, preventing any suggestion boxes from automatically appearing.