How to turn off Smart Reply and Smart Compose features in Gmail

These features are developed to help users save time and work more efficiently on Gmail. However, if you find these features troublesome, or simply don't need to use Gmail's email suggestions or auto-reply, you can turn them off completely.

What are Smart Reply and Smart Compose in Gmail?

Smart Compose is basically a feature that will show you content suggestions when composing an email, saving you time typing. Suggestions can be made based on the user's email writing style as soon as they enable this feature in Gmail.

Meanwhile, Smart Reply, as the name suggests, will automatically analyze the content of emails you receive, then offer suggestions for quick replies for you to choose from. You just need to choose the appropriate answer to reply to the email and you're done.

You can disable both of these features in the Gmail settings menu on a per-account and per-device basis in the Gmail web app or the Gmail mobile app for iPhone and Android.

How to turn off Smart Reply and Smart Compose on Gmail web

First, visit the Gmail website in your web browser as usual. Click the settings button (looks like a gear icon) on the top toolbar and select the 'See All Settings' option.

In the 'General' tab, scroll down and find the 'Smart Compose' section. Tap the 'Writing Suggestions Off' option to disable the feature.

Next, scroll down a bit further and find the 'Smart Reply' section. Similarly, click on the circular button next to the 'Smart Reply Off' option to turn the feature off.

Then keep scrolling to the bottom of the page and click the 'Save Changes' button.

This will save any changes you made above and return you to your Gmail inbox.

How to turn off Smart Reply and Smart Compose in Gmail Android and iPhone apps

The process is the same for both iPhone and Android devices.

First, you open the Gmail app on your iPhone or Android smartphone as usual. Then, tap the menu button (three parallel lines) on the top toolbar.

Scroll down and tap on 'Settings'.

Select the email account for which you want to disable Smart Reply and Smart Compose.

Scroll down and uncheck the 'Smart Reply' and 'Smart Compose' features. Then, tap the back button in the top left corner to return to the main Gmail screen.

If you're using multiple accounts in the Gmail app, repeat the process to disable the feature in all your accounts.

Jessica Tanner

Update 08 June 2021