On my Android phone, when I long press on a word in any app next to copy is a "define" option. I usually ignore this but I just used it for the first time and discovered it actually brings up Gemini "AI". I now wish to disable this. Does anyone know if there's a setting to remove the "Define" menu option?
that's really frustrating! it used to just link to a dictionary entry like you'd expect.
strangely, i do not have this on my pixel. i suspect it's because i don't use the Google app for anything nor do i have it enabled on my home screen, but I'm not sure
if you.have managed to refuse, dismiss, delay and not now your way to never allowing Gemini on your android phone, it just does a standard Google search.
I have the Google widget disabled and my normal search set to use UDM14. But the define button bypasses that and goes to the front-page Google search. Which is AI. That is the problem.
@gwhennigan with my EU-provisioned Android 13 phone, with the default search being Kagi a.t.m., I don't have any "define" anywhere. Perhaps it's Android 14+ crap?
I can’t speak to getting rid of the Gemini garbage, unfortunately.
Pretty sure I learned that term when some CHUDs were going on about brilliant hair colors and colorful tattoos being examples of aposematism and clear examples that women don’t understand male sexual attraction. Then someone replied “Aposematism is there to warn off predators, not sexual partners. If you’re repelled by it, it’s working.”
I use a legacy free GSuite account, where all the AI stuff seems to be turned off. For me, that button just opens up search results for "define $TERM". That in turn usually shows a dictionary card at the top.
I've yet to see any AI summaries in search results or Gemini features in Docs, etc.
I understand that for regular Google Workspaces, the administrator can turn Gemini on or off. For legacy GSuite, it seems like I'd have to upgrade to turn it on.
@jamesh interesting. Unfortunately I think I intentionally shut down my legacy gsuite during the period they announced they were going to start charging for it.
Looking at the admin console again, it looks like I could turn on "Gemini app" access (it was off by default), but the "Gemini for Workspace" stuff isn't available. I'm not sure whether enabling the app would affect search results.
Apparently the search AI overview feature was turned on for Australia in October, so it's probably not just luck that I haven't seen one yet.
I actually seem to have made it go away. But I spend a lot of energy trying to make Google stop overtaking basic functions, so I'm sure I disabled more than one thing.
After reading the replies here, I tried disabling the Google app.
This killed the "define" shortcut on word selection and seems(?) to have had no other bad effects. (My home screen search was already using something else.)
This is weird. If the Google app is doing this, that implies it must have some kind of special permission, to add an item to the selection menu globally. Why did I not find it under permissions? Shouldn't I have been able to turn that permisson off without disabling the app?
What worries me about having the Google app off is sometimes Google, when I log in to Google dot com, will throw up a permission request on my phone as a kind of 2FA. Is that mediated through the Google app? Did I just disable it? Am I now locked out of my Google account potentially if it sends a 2FA notification and there's no app to receive it…? I'm not too worried because if that's true it's reversible. But I'm a little worried
why don't you switch to a non-google 2FA app, there is some choice of these; I'm using andOTP (or even a terminal or desktop program - this takes the phone out of the picture; I am using a terminal program called pass, with a pass-otp extension) ?
@dimpase I did not elect to use the Google app as a 2FA app; Google just started doing this. I didn't consent to it in the first place and I'm not aware of any method by which I could opt out of it, much less plug in some other app in its place.
For safety I would strongly recommend using standard, TOTP MFA (such as FreeOTP which is an open-source alternative to... Google authenticator) which works almost everywhere (including Google and Microsoft authentication services), and also work offline (very useful e.g. when you're working in a server room with no wireless service and for safety/privacy). You can easily enable TOTP in your Google profile security parameters, it will be offered as an (alternative) authentication method
So last month, in hopes it would remove an AI-based "Define" feature from my Android phone, I disabled the "Google" app. This didn't work; a month later the app seemingly re-enabled itself and the "Define" started reappearing.
The thing that worried me was that if I disabled the Google app I would get locked out of my Google account, because of a mandatory 2FA-like feature Google forces if you use Android.
The last time I complained about this, a couple people made a tenuous claim that if you go into the deep privacy settings and enable a TOTP authenticator (the setting says "Google Authenticator" but it doesn't have to be Google's) they will stop doing the busted, inflexible pseudo-2FA with the Google app. I guess now that I've received a warning shot, I better set this up. However, this creates a risk I'll be locked out of Google AND my TOTP app, due to a dependency loop: mastodon.social/@mcc/113946691…
Hmm, strange. I disabled the Google app a long time ago. I even hard deleted the app using adb about a month ago. I still get those "Was this you" prompts though.
Edit: Although, sometimes they don't show up, just like you add in the follow-up posts in your thread. So this matches my experience too.
@veronica I wonder, if one switches from a Google Android with Google Play Services to something like GrapheneOS with NextCloud, if they suddenly get locked out of google websites because they wiped all their Google phone apps but once Google has tasted blood it insists on you always having at least one Google app
For Google Android I think it boils down to whether any device is registered to the account or not for that prompt. I also have a Google account for work, but no devices on it. I added a 2FA app, but I can't remember what it did before that. Maybe it just fell back to username/password. The fallback for 2FA is the codes it generates when you set it up.
Untangling the Google dependency is tricky. I'm close to achieving it. Most of accounts signed up with the GMail account are disposable.
@hyc @veronica Do you ever get the "please verify your identity by tapping the notification on your phone" 2FA prompt when logging into Google websites?
@hyc I rarely log into my personal account, where I do get the prompt, but I am always logged into my work Google account in another browser, and I never get that prompt there. I do think I used to, because in the beginning I had my phone registered with both accounts. So I'm pretty sure you can get rid of it. As I said, I just switched to a non-Google 2FA, so it asks for that instead.
I am basically on that setup. Even if Google asks for it's own authentication there is a button to switch to authenticator. Which can be any authenticator. I have never been locked out. Yet. On the other hand the only thing Google I still use are youtube and occasionally maps.
Today I had a *very* urgent need to sign in to gmail on a particular old laptop. It said it was activating the pseudo-2FA feature and I had to tap OK on my Android phone. There was no notification on my Android phone. I spent about 10 minutes scouring my phone, clicking "resend", checking in various apps, checking all the permissions.
Did this happen because the Google app was temporarily disabled last month? Or did Google, of all people, somehow fail at notification delivery, and the Google app disable was a coincidence?
I have always hated this feature. The fact Google enables it without telling you makes it seem plausible you could accidentally associate a Google account with an Android phone which is not your own and which you do not have access to. But I've never seen the feature to malfunction like this.
The last time I complained about this, a couple people made a tenuous claim that if you go into the deep privacy settings and enable a TOTP authenticator (the setting says "Google Authenticator" but it doesn't have to be Google's) they will stop doing the busted, inflexible pseudo-2FA with the Google app. I guess now that I've received a warning shot, I better set this up. However, this creates a risk I'll be locked out of Google AND my TOTP app, due to a dependency loop: mastodon.social/@mcc/113946691…
I understand why they're doing this but if I was okay with Google being able to lock me out of my password manager then I would simply be using Google's password manager already
in my experience what this does is google always still fires the pseudo auth through apps but will also let you override that with the authenticator. mixed success, i wish i could disable app auth entirely
@lunalapin I cannot make categorical statements about what Google has or has not committed to do, but I can observe that I have both hardware keys and a TOTP fallback enabled and I have not seen one of these prompts in years.
@cthos @cammerman Am I missing something?? If I use the "Bitwarden Authenticator" app does that not have the same login requirements as the base Bitwarden app??
@cammerman It does, though your login stays cached on the the device for a while (depending on your settings) so you can open it while offline and it'll still generate its codes.
Not that I'd suggest using bitwarden as Bitwarden's TOTP 2FA
I use a local PW manager (Buttercup) that also has a phone client I can sync to for this reason. It's not perfect, but it fits my spicy better than the other stuff I've seen
I have TOTP and physical tokens for google. If I have an issue with my physical token, google fails back on TOTP, if I have an issue with TOTP, I think google fails back to in app notifications, if that fails, I believe they fail back to email recover.
Which means, by using, TOTP or physical authenticators, you are not making your account more safe, as the fall backs are still there.
Unless you sign up for Google's "Advanced Protection Program", then the fall backs are turned off.
I hate this too, implicitly turning random things into credentials without your explicit permission is a horrible idea. until now, when I have logged into google on new computers, it has offered TOTP as an alternative, but I'm not sure you can rely on that or what the story is when you lose your phone
For what it's worth, I have definitely had Google fail at notification delivery. Was trying to help a relative gain access to a Gmail account, and the notifications just would. not. show. up.
Had to give up and try again the next day. Worked fine then.
This is your wake-up call to move everything away from Google. It's not easy. It also made me realize that it's important to own your Email domain. I now can change my email provider at any time by changing the MX records, and still keep my email address.
I had similar happen and realized I was signed in to that account on the YouTube app which implements the google auth confirmation too. Opened YouTube and the pop up appeared for me to approve!
I'm not an expert on Android, but if I were to guess, Google is probably installed as a privileged app, which allows it some system-level permissions that don't seem to be controllable by the user, at least via a graphical interface.
Google giving special permissions to its own apps is widely done. Its very likely there is some special permission but no UI to disable it. Very shitty.
On my phone, hidden behind the three dots on the hovering bar there is a "Manage Apps" option which allows me to enable/disable which apps may put something in this context menu (also non-google apps, like Wikipedia, show up, so it can't be a google-specific permission)
@gordoooo_z @aadmaa my experimenting with this last month suggests you have to do it in the opposite order. i think you can't turn off the app-based 2fa *unless* you first enable a different 2fa method.
@aadmaa If they're logged in on the browser on another device (ideally a desktop/laptop), then you should be able to turn off the 2FA method (can't remember if you can do that without logging out the 2FA device) at myaccount.google.com under the Security tab. Then the other methods should become available. It's *possible* it will also ask you to 2FA here too, but if it doesn't, then you're good to go.'
@aadmaa You can't explicitly "turn it off," but you can log out that device from My Account, which accomplishes the same thing.
Now that I think of it, you probably don't have to do anything. The Google app isn't what handles the 2FA, Google Play Services does. The Google app basically just unlocks more assistant features/integrations. Google Play Services handles all the mandatory conveniences you expect from your Android phone.
@rotopenguin The case I'd be worried about here is that a fire, or the United States Customs and Border Patrol, cause me to lose all my devices at once and I have to "bootstrap" from nothing.
vivi 💫
in reply to mcc • • •that's really frustrating! it used to just link to a dictionary entry like you'd expect.
strangely, i do not have this on my pixel. i suspect it's because i don't use the Google app for anything nor do i have it enabled on my home screen, but I'm not sure
mcc
in reply to vivi 💫 • • •vivi 💫
in reply to mcc • • •mcc
in reply to vivi 💫 • • •gwhennigan
in reply to mcc • • •if you.have managed to refuse, dismiss, delay and not now your way to never allowing Gemini on your android phone, it just does a standard Google search.
If you can, never let the AI in
mcc
in reply to gwhennigan • • •@gwhennigan the standard Google search is Gemini.
I have the Google widget disabled and my normal search set to use UDM14. But the define button bypasses that and goes to the front-page Google search. Which is AI. That is the problem.
gwhennigan
in reply to mcc • • •Dima Pasechnik 🇺🇦 🇳🇱
in reply to gwhennigan • • •mcc
in reply to Dima Pasechnik 🇺🇦 🇳🇱 • • •Graham Sutherland / Polynomial
in reply to mcc • • •Graham Sutherland / Polynomial
in reply to Graham Sutherland / Polynomial • • •mcc
in reply to Graham Sutherland / Polynomial • • •Zimmie
in reply to mcc • • •I can’t speak to getting rid of the Gemini garbage, unfortunately.
Pretty sure I learned that term when some CHUDs were going on about brilliant hair colors and colorful tattoos being examples of aposematism and clear examples that women don’t understand male sexual attraction. Then someone replied “Aposematism is there to warn off predators, not sexual partners. If you’re repelled by it, it’s working.”
Brutal, which made it very memorable.
James Henstridge
in reply to mcc • • •mcc
in reply to James Henstridge • • •James Henstridge
in reply to mcc • • •I've yet to see any AI summaries in search results or Gemini features in Docs, etc.
I understand that for regular Google Workspaces, the administrator can turn Gemini on or off. For legacy GSuite, it seems like I'd have to upgrade to turn it on.
mcc
in reply to James Henstridge • • •James Henstridge
in reply to mcc • • •Looking at the admin console again, it looks like I could turn on "Gemini app" access (it was off by default), but the "Gemini for Workspace" stuff isn't available. I'm not sure whether enabling the app would affect search results.
Apparently the search AI overview feature was turned on for Australia in October, so it's probably not just luck that I haven't seen one yet.
mcc
in reply to James Henstridge • • •@jamesh oh, that's probably why.
Canada had it off for a while, but it turned on in like December.
Amanda Bee
in reply to mcc • • •mcc
in reply to Amanda Bee • • •Amanda Bee
in reply to mcc • • •mcc
in reply to Amanda Bee • • •mcc
in reply to mcc • • •After reading the replies here, I tried disabling the Google app.
This killed the "define" shortcut on word selection and seems(?) to have had no other bad effects. (My home screen search was already using something else.)
This is weird. If the Google app is doing this, that implies it must have some kind of special permission, to add an item to the selection menu globally. Why did I not find it under permissions? Shouldn't I have been able to turn that permisson off without disabling the app?
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •Dima Pasechnik 🇺🇦 🇳🇱
in reply to mcc • • •mcc
in reply to Dima Pasechnik 🇺🇦 🇳🇱 • • •Dima Pasechnik 🇺🇦 🇳🇱
in reply to mcc • • •it’s me
in reply to mcc • • •mcc
in reply to it’s me • • •Oblomov
in reply to mcc • • •Artéan
in reply to mcc • • •mcc
in reply to Artéan • • •Tristam
in reply to mcc • • •mcc
in reply to mcc • • •Just had a terrifying experience
So last month, in hopes it would remove an AI-based "Define" feature from my Android phone, I disabled the "Google" app. This didn't work; a month later the app seemingly re-enabled itself and the "Define" started reappearing.
The thing that worried me was that if I disabled the Google app I would get locked out of my Google account, because of a mandatory 2FA-like feature Google forces if you use Android.
Today I got locked out of my Google account.
Capybara
in reply to mcc • • •mcc
in reply to Capybara • • •@sotneStatue mastodon.social/@mcc/114037111…
mcc
2025-02-20 16:17:11
Capybara
in reply to mcc • • •mcc
in reply to Capybara • • •Veronica Olsen
in reply to mcc • • •Hmm, strange. I disabled the Google app a long time ago. I even hard deleted the app using adb about a month ago. I still get those "Was this you" prompts though.
Edit: Although, sometimes they don't show up, just like you add in the follow-up posts in your thread. So this matches my experience too.
mcc
in reply to Veronica Olsen • • •Veronica Olsen
in reply to mcc • • •Really? I hard deleted that one too. 😅
I basically removed all Google apps except the Play store and service.
mcc
in reply to Veronica Olsen • • •mcc reshared this.
Veronica Olsen
in reply to mcc • • •For Google Android I think it boils down to whether any device is registered to the account or not for that prompt. I also have a Google account for work, but no devices on it. I added a 2FA app, but I can't remember what it did before that. Maybe it just fell back to username/password. The fallback for 2FA is the codes it generates when you set it up.
Untangling the Google dependency is tricky. I'm close to achieving it. Most of accounts signed up with the GMail account are disposable.
Howard Chu @ Symas
in reply to mcc • • •mcc
in reply to Howard Chu @ Symas • • •Howard Chu @ Symas
in reply to mcc • • •Veronica Olsen
in reply to Howard Chu @ Symas • • •mcc
in reply to Veronica Olsen • • •Veronica Olsen
in reply to mcc • • •tipjip
in reply to mcc • • •@veronica @mcc
I am basically on that setup. Even if Google asks for it's own authentication there is a button to switch to authenticator. Which can be any authenticator. I have never been locked out. Yet. On the other hand the only thing Google I still use are youtube and occasionally maps.
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •Today I had a *very* urgent need to sign in to gmail on a particular old laptop. It said it was activating the pseudo-2FA feature and I had to tap OK on my Android phone. There was no notification on my Android phone. I spent about 10 minutes scouring my phone, clicking "resend", checking in various apps, checking all the permissions.
Eventually, it appeared.
I have no idea what just happened!
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •Did this happen because the Google app was temporarily disabled last month? Or did Google, of all people, somehow fail at notification delivery, and the Google app disable was a coincidence?
I have always hated this feature. The fact Google enables it without telling you makes it seem plausible you could accidentally associate a Google account with an Android phone which is not your own and which you do not have access to. But I've never seen the feature to malfunction like this.
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •The last time I complained about this, a couple people made a tenuous claim that if you go into the deep privacy settings and enable a TOTP authenticator (the setting says "Google Authenticator" but it doesn't have to be Google's) they will stop doing the busted, inflexible pseudo-2FA with the Google app. I guess now that I've received a warning shot, I better set this up. However, this creates a risk I'll be locked out of Google AND my TOTP app, due to a dependency loop: mastodon.social/@mcc/113946691…
mcc
2025-02-04 17:02:04
Gwyn 😈
in reply to mcc • • •Gwyn 😈
in reply to Gwyn 😈 • • •Glyph
in reply to Gwyn 😈 • • •mcc
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in reply to mcc • • •mcc
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in reply to mcc • • •mcc
in reply to mcc • • •cthos 🐱
in reply to mcc • • •@cammerman It does, though your login stays cached on the the device for a while (depending on your settings) so you can open it while offline and it'll still generate its codes.
Not that I'd suggest using bitwarden as Bitwarden's TOTP 2FA
Erin
in reply to mcc • • •Dan Cassidy 🦌
in reply to mcc • • •tipjip
in reply to mcc • • •Tom Priore
in reply to mcc • • •I have TOTP and physical tokens for google. If I have an issue with my physical token, google fails back on TOTP, if I have an issue with TOTP, I think google fails back to in app notifications, if that fails, I believe they fail back to email recover.
Which means, by using, TOTP or physical authenticators, you are not making your account more safe, as the fall backs are still there.
Unless you sign up for Google's "Advanced Protection Program", then the fall backs are turned off.
jcoglan
in reply to mcc • • •⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️
in reply to mcc • • •Pixel 6a, YMMV etc
Robert Hutchinson
in reply to mcc • • •For what it's worth, I have definitely had Google fail at notification delivery. Was trying to help a relative gain access to a Gmail account, and the notifications just would. not. show. up.
Had to give up and try again the next day. Worked fine then.
Howard Chu @ Symas
in reply to mcc • • •mcc
in reply to Howard Chu @ Symas • • •Claude Gohier
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mcc
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Klara ❤️
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Unknown parent • • •My name is Gordo
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in reply to mcc • • •@aadmaa You can't explicitly "turn it off," but you can log out that device from My Account, which accomplishes the same thing.
Now that I think of it, you probably don't have to do anything. The Google app isn't what handles the 2FA, Google Play Services does. The Google app basically just unlocks more assistant features/integrations. Google Play Services handles all the mandatory conveniences you expect from your Android phone.
mcc
in reply to My name is Gordo • • •Li ~ Crystal System
in reply to mcc • • •mcc
in reply to Li ~ Crystal System • • •mcc
Unknown parent • • •