The Blue Underline Clutter
Google Docs is highly optimized for creating web-ready content. By default, whenever you type a recognized URL (like `www.example.com`) or an email address, Google Docs instantly converts that plain text into an active, clickable hyperlink. To denote this visually, it automatically changes the text color to blue and applies a solid underline. While this is helpful for digital documents, it is incredibly frustrating when you are typing a formal manuscript, a printed bibliography, or technical code snippets where you specifically need the URL to remain as standard, unformatted text without the distracting blue underline.
Disabling Automatic Link Detection
To stop Google Docs from automatically underlining links and converting them to blue text, you must disable the auto-detection formatting preference.
Open your Google Doc. Navigate to the top menu bar and click on Tools. From the drop-down menu, select Preferences. A small dialog box will appear. Ensure you are on the General tab. Look for the checkbox labeled Automatically detect links. By default, this box is checked. Click the checkbox to remove the checkmark, then click OK to save the setting. From now on, when you type a URL or email address and press the spacebar or Enter, Google Docs will treat it as normal text, retaining your current font color and avoiding the underline. To fix links that have already been formatted, simply click anywhere inside the blue link, click the small “Remove link” icon in the pop-up bubble (the chainlink with a slash), and the text will revert to standard formatting without the underline.