I hate having Gemini in Google Messages — here's how to hide it

While plenty of people have complained about Gemini showing up in Google apps without users explicitly enabling it, this hasn’t stopped the company from rolling out its AI assistant to more services. There’s Gemini in Gmail, Chrome, and of course, Google Drive.

This time around, though, Gemini has literally slid into our DMs, as the AI automatically appears in Google Messages — and has for some time now. But if you don’t want the shortcut to hover above your chat button, there’s at least a way to get rid of it.

Gemini has shown up in Google Messages, whether you want it or not

Google doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to letting users choose whether they want Gemini to appear in their apps. In fact, with Google Workspace apps like Gmail, you can enable them all at once or none at all.

This leaves users with a bit of a conundrum. If you want to benefit from Gemini’s integration with a single app, you may need to enable an entire batch to get this functionality. For example, I want Gemini to be able to pull from my Google Calendar. But this means that I also need to allow it access to my Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, Keep, and Tasks. I would prefer if the AI stayed away from my emails, and I resent Gemini every time it summarizes correspondence without any prompting. However, if you want to disable Gemini in Gmail, you lose access to integration with any other Workspace app.

Currently, there is no toggle for Google Messages in your Connected apps settings in Gemini. Despite this, you may have noticed the Gemini button appearing in your messaging app anyway. Luckily, you can disable this shortcut if you don’t want to use it.

How to disable the Gemini button in Google Messages

The Gemini shortcut appears above your Start chat icon in Google Messages. To get rid of this button, open your account menu by tapping your profile icon in the top right corner. Then head to Messages settings > General. If you only have one SIM in your phone, you won’t have to tap that General button.

On this page, tap on Gemini in Messages and then switch off the toggle for Show Gemini button. When you head back to your Messages home screen, the shortcut will be gone.

However, it’s important to note that this doesn’t completely remove Gemini’s functionality from the Google Messages app. When you click on the Start chat button, you’ll still see Gemini above your contacts — even if you haven’t given Gemini access to your contacts or opted into the service in Google Messages.

This isn’t surprising, given that Google doesn’t allow you to fully disable Gemini features in other services, such as Google Search. It’s part of the reason why I switched to another search engine. However, it’s disappointing that the company doesn’t give users real freedom to disable AI features.

Hopefully, the company will give users real options in the future. But for now, the best you can do is hide annoying shortcuts like this from view and keep an eye on which apps and permissions Gemini requests access to.