An AI feature that’s on by default — here’s what it is and how to turn it off
Opening Gmail to write an email and finding that text is appearing automatically — suggestions completing your sentences, phrases appearing before you’ve typed them, or an AI-generated draft populating the compose window — is disorienting if you didn’t knowingly enable anything.
Gmail has several AI-assisted writing features that are active by default, and most people never explicitly turned them on.
Here’s what each feature is and how to disable the ones you don’t want.
Smart Compose: Sentence Completion as You Type
This is the feature most people notice first. As you type an email, Gmail suggests how to complete your current sentence — the suggestion appears in light grey text after your cursor. If you keep typing, the suggestion disappears. If you press Tab, the suggestion is accepted and inserted into your email.
Smart Compose uses AI to predict likely continuations based on what you’re writing, your writing style from previous emails, and common email phrases. It’s designed to speed up email writing but many people find it distracting or intrusive — particularly when the suggestions are wrong or don’t match your voice.
To turn off Smart Compose:
On desktop, go to Settings → See All Settings → General. Scroll down to Smart Compose and select Writing Suggestions Off. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.
On mobile, open the Gmail app, tap the three lines in the top left, go to Settings, select your account, and look for Smart Compose. Toggle it off.
Smart Compose Personalization
Smart Compose has a secondary setting — personalization — that tailors suggestions based on your past writing. Even if you turn off Smart Compose suggestions, the personalization data continues to be collected unless you disable it separately.
In Settings → See All Settings → General, look for Smart Compose Personalization just below the Smart Compose setting. Select Personalization Off if you don’t want Gmail learning from your writing style even when suggestions are disabled.
Smart Reply: Suggested Responses at the Bottom of Emails
Smart Reply is different from Smart Compose. Rather than completing sentences as you write, Smart Reply suggests short reply options at the bottom of emails you receive — things like “Sounds good,” “Thanks,” or “I’ll take a look.” Tapping or clicking one of these inserts it as your reply.
Smart Reply doesn’t write emails for you unprompted — it only shows suggestions when you’re viewing a received email and about to reply. But if you’re accidentally clicking these suggestions, your replies are being written by Gmail.
To turn off Smart Reply:
On desktop, go to Settings → See All Settings → General. Scroll to Smart Reply and select Smart Reply Off. Save Changes.
On mobile, go to Settings → your account → Smart Reply and toggle it off.
Gmail’s Help Me Write Feature (Gemini AI)
This is the most powerful writing assistance Gmail offers and the one that most dramatically writes emails for you. Help Me Write uses Google’s Gemini AI to generate entire email drafts based on a brief prompt you provide.
When composing an email, look for a pencil with a star icon or a Help Me Write button in the compose toolbar. Clicking it opens a prompt field where you describe what you want to say — “Write a follow-up email about our meeting on Tuesday” — and Gemini generates a full draft.
This feature requires an explicit action to activate — you have to click the button and enter a prompt. It doesn’t run automatically. If full emails are appearing without you clicking anything, Smart Compose rather than Help Me Write is the likely cause.
However if you’re accidentally triggering Help Me Write through the toolbar button, you can minimize its presence by staying aware of where it is in the compose window.
Help Me Write is part of Google’s Gemini integration in Gmail. It’s available to users with Google One AI Premium subscriptions and in some Google Workspace plans. On free Gmail accounts, availability varies by region and rollout status.
Autocorrect and Autocomplete on Mobile
On the Gmail mobile app, your phone’s keyboard autocorrect and autocomplete features apply on top of Gmail’s own suggestions. What looks like Gmail writing your emails may actually be your phone’s keyboard completing words and phrases.
This is a keyboard-level feature rather than Gmail-specific. If you see word completions appearing above your keyboard as you type, those are coming from your keyboard app — Gboard, SwiftKey, Apple’s keyboard — not from Gmail.
To distinguish between Gmail suggestions and keyboard suggestions: Gmail’s Smart Compose suggestions appear inline in the email body in grey text. Keyboard suggestions appear in the suggestion bar above the keyboard in separate tappable words.
To reduce keyboard suggestions, go to your phone’s keyboard settings and adjust or disable autocomplete — on iPhone at Settings → General → Keyboard → Predictive, on Android in your keyboard app’s settings.
Canned Responses and Templates
If pre-written text is appearing fully formed when you compose certain emails, you or someone with access to your account may have set up Templates (formerly called Canned Responses). Templates are saved email drafts that can be inserted into a compose window with a few clicks.
Go to Settings → See All Settings → Advanced. Check whether Templates is enabled. If it is and you didn’t set it up intentionally, disable it.
To check existing templates, click compose, then the three dots in the bottom right of the compose window, hover over Templates, and see what’s saved there. Delete any you don’t want.
A Third-Party Extension Is Writing Your Emails
Browser extensions that assist with email writing — Grammarly, Jasper, Copy.ai, and similar AI writing tools — integrate directly into Gmail’s compose window and can appear to write text automatically. If you have any writing assistant extensions installed, they may be inserting text as you compose.
Test by opening Gmail in incognito mode where most extensions are disabled. If Gmail stops writing text for you in incognito, a browser extension is responsible in your regular window. Identify it by going to your browser’s extensions page and disabling writing-related extensions one at a time.
How to Turn Everything Off at Once
If you want to disable all of Gmail’s AI writing features in one session on desktop:
Go to Settings → See All Settings → General and make the following changes:
Set Smart Compose to Writing Suggestions Off.
Set Smart Compose Personalization to Personalization Off.
Set Smart Reply to Smart Reply Off.
Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.
These three settings cover the features that actively write text in Gmail without requiring explicit prompting. Help Me Write remains available through the toolbar button but doesn’t activate automatically.
If You Want to Keep Some Features
The features aren’t all-or-nothing. Many people find Smart Reply useful for quick acknowledgment emails while finding Smart Compose intrusive. Or vice versa. Turn off what bothers you and leave what’s useful.
Smart Compose in particular has a middle ground — leaving it on but simply ignoring suggestions (don’t press Tab) means it’s there when convenient but doesn’t interfere with normal typing. The suggestions only insert text when you actively accept them.
A Quick Summary
| Feature | What It Does | Where to Disable |
|---|---|---|
| Smart Compose | Completes sentences as you type | Settings → General → Smart Compose Off |
| Smart Compose Personalization | Learns your writing style | Settings → General → Personalization Off |
| Smart Reply | Suggests short replies to received emails | Settings → General → Smart Reply Off |
| Help Me Write | Generates full drafts from a prompt | Requires explicit toolbar click — not automatic |
| Keyboard autocomplete | Phone keyboard word suggestions | Phone keyboard settings |
| Extensions | Third-party AI writing tools | Browser extensions page |
The Bottom Line
Gmail writing your emails is almost always Smart Compose — the sentence completion feature that’s enabled by default and suggests text in grey as you type. Pressing Tab accepts the suggestion. If you’ve been pressing Tab while typing, Smart Compose has been inserting its suggestions into your emails.
Turning it off takes thirty seconds in Gmail settings and immediately stops the automatic text suggestions. Smart Reply and Help Me Write are separate features with their own settings, worth addressing if you want Gmail’s AI involvement in your writing minimized entirely.
Gmail isn’t writing your emails without permission — it’s making suggestions you’ve been accepting. Turn off Smart Compose and the suggestions stop appearing.
Meet Ry, “TechGuru,” a 36-year-old technology enthusiast with a deep passion for tech innovations. With extensive experience, he specializes in gaming hardware and software, and has expertise in gadgets, custom PCs, and audio.
Besides writing about tech and reviewing new products, he enjoys traveling, hiking, and photography. Committed to keeping up with the latest industry trends, he aims to guide readers in making informed tech decisions.