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?
Conversation
Notices
-
Embed this notice
mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Feb-2025 13:26:54 JST mcc
- Rich Felker repeated this.
-
Embed this notice
mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Feb-2025 13:26:53 JST 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?
-
Embed this notice
mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Feb-2025 13:26:53 JST mcc
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
-
Embed this notice
Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Feb-2025 13:26:53 JST Rich Felker
@mcc I had that happen and it was terrifying because my phone is only logged in thru microG which has no such antifeature. Thankfully I was able to use a logged in browser session on a laptop instead, but otherwise I think that would have been hard lockout. I never consented to having my phone treated as a 2FA device.
-
Embed this notice
Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Feb-2025 13:28:02 JST Rich Felker
@dimpase @mcc I tried and couldn't find any way to refuse it.
-
Embed this notice
Dima Pasechnik 🇺🇦 🇳🇱 (dimpase@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Feb-2025 13:28:03 JST Dima Pasechnik 🇺🇦 🇳🇱
@mcc 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) ?