Google has added Gemini to Chrome, and the Ask Gemini button now shows up in the top right corner of the browser. By default, Gemini can view the pages you open. That means it can read your tabs automatically unless you turn the feature off.
This can be useful if you want a quick summary of a page. But many people would rather not have an AI assistant looking at everything they browse.
How to turn Gemini Chrome access off
- Open Chrome.
- Click the three dot menu and go to Settings.
- Select AI innovations, then Gemini in Chrome.
- Scroll to Permissions.
- Turn off Share current tab by default.
After that, Gemini will no longer grab the page you are viewing when you start a chat. You can still share a tab manually if you want.
The same settings page lets you limit Gemini further. You can hide the Gemini button from the top of the browser, stop it from using your location, turn off microphone access, and control whether it can sign you in to websites.
There is no single switch that disables Gemini completely. Even with every option turned off, Ask Gemini still appears if you right click selected text.
An unofficial fix exists for now. Type chrome://flags/#glic in the address bar, find the Glic flag, change it from Default to Disabled, and relaunch Chrome. Take note that Google could remove this workaround in a future update.
As it stands, it looks like AI assistants like Gemini in Chrome and Copilot in Edge are not going away. For now, limiting them is the best users can do.