Google Docs is designed to be a “smart” word processor, actively trying to anticipate your formatting needs. One of its most common automatic behaviors is transforming any URL or email address you type into a clickable blue hyperlink the moment you press the spacebar or the Enter key.
While this is convenient for digital documents that will be read on a screen, it is highly undesirable if you are drafting a formal letter, a resume, or a manuscript intended for print. Blue, underlined text looks unprofessional on a printed page, and manually right-clicking every single link to select “Remove link” is tedious.
If you want to type email addresses or website URLs as plain, unformatted text, you can turn off automatic link detection entirely.
How to Disable Automatic Hyperlinks in Google Docs
This setting is buried within the Preferences menu, but it only takes a few clicks to disable:
- Open your document in Google Docs on a desktop web browser.
- Click on Tools in the top menu bar.
- From the drop-down menu, select Preferences.
- A pop-up window will appear. Ensure you are on the General tab.
- Look for the checkbox labeled Automatically detect links.
- Uncheck this box.
- Click the blue OK button at the bottom of the window.
From now on, whenever you type an email address (like [email protected]) or a web address (like www.google.com), Google Docs will leave it as plain text, matching the exact font and color of the rest of your paragraph. If you ever need to manually create a link, you can still do so by highlighting the text and pressing Ctrl + K (or Cmd + K on a Mac).