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I am at work, and wanted to Google something, but then I saw the Halloween Doodle (and I played with it). Now I have no idea what I was searching for.

How can I disable Google's doodle, to stop it from slowing down my productivity?

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4
  • 1
    FYI: What's the impact of Google's doodles on productivity?
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Nov 24, 2013 at 4:22
  • 1
    At this time situation is even worst as the Google's doodles are displayed in Google web search results, in the Chrome new tab, in Google Now... ;)
    – Rubén ♦
    Sep 1, 2015 at 22:59
  • 1
    It's turned into activist nonsense, I have zero interest being propagandised. Really the solution is to stop using Google of course, I'm getting there, hopefully DDG will improve...
    – niico
    Oct 14, 2020 at 8:53
  • Blocking anything bigoted woke big tech does it always good.
    – niico
    Dec 1, 2022 at 16:05

12 Answers 12

Reset to default
8

I don't know what Google are thinking - here's how I solved it in Firefox, with the Adblocker add-on.

Go to the Adblock pulldown and select 'Filter Preferences'. Select 'Ad blocking rules' in the left box. On the right click 'Add filter' and input http://www.google.com/logos/*

Alternatively use: https://duckduckgo.com/

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  • DuckDuckGo now has it's own doodles too.
    – user57397
    Jan 20, 2014 at 19:35
  • searx is another search engine which proxies results from google and presents them to you. stats.searx.oe5tpo.com is list of public "searx" instances -you are free to set up your own searx- and their health reports. if you check you can see searx ui is quite minimal in design, and you can also get result export in csv and more formats. another similar metasearch which is specialized to google is ixquick.com
    – n611x007
    Dec 21, 2014 at 14:35
  • Thank you! I don't need my search engine to consume CPU with its dumb animations. (Change http to https to work today.)
    – Thomas Eding
    Mar 8, 2017 at 18:04
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    For uBlock Origin: https://www.google.com/logos/doodles/* News, warnings and doodles are a danger to your train of thought. It is not okay to disrupt people's focus with unsolicited info.
    – Ray Foss
    Jul 31, 2020 at 16:09
4

Google is the default web search engine in both Firefox and Chrome, which means that you do not need to visit google.com to search.

Just type whatever you want to search for in the address bar and press enter. If whatever you have entered doesn't matched the format of a wesite/webpage, it would take you to the Google Search result page of the text.

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3
  • +1 I always do this, so I save 1 page load each time, and I never see the doodles.
    – nic
    Sep 27, 2013 at 7:51
  • 3
    Firefox changed its default search engine. See blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/…
    – Rubén ♦
    Sep 1, 2015 at 22:54
  • Haha, I remember when FF did that. I filed a bug report :D
    – Thomas Eding
    Mar 8, 2017 at 18:07
3

There's no official way to disable it. Here are some options:

  • Disable JavaScript in your browser. This will however heavily influence the functionality of all web applications.

  • Click Change Background Image in the bottom left and set any image you like. You could even upload a simple white image to your Picasa account and use that.

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3

Just install the Adblock Plus add-on and add this rule:

s/http/https/://www.google.com/logos/*

This solution works for me.

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1
  • ||www.google.com/logos/* yields a clean page for me.
    – z1273
    Aug 29, 2021 at 13:06
1

Here is a solution I use in Internet Explorer 11. IE will use the default search provider to search from the address bar. I set Google as the default search provider, never need to browse to google.com and thus avoid the doodle.

In the upper right corner of Internet Explorer click the Tools icon (looks like a gear) then select Manage add-ons. Select Search Providers in the Add-on Types list. If Google is in the list, right click on the entry and select Set at default.

If Google is not in the list, click Find more search providers... at the bottom of the window. This will take you to the Internet Explorer Gallery where you can select additional IE add-ons. Select Google Search in the list of Add-ons then click the Add to Internet Explorer button.

Check the box next to Make this my default search provider and click Add. Close the Manage Add-ons window.

Now you can search directly from the address bar. Don't bother going to google.com.

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1

There is a userstyle that will replace the doodles and special logos with the default. Here are the set up instructions:

  1. Install Stylish for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Opera.
  2. Install Force Default Google Logo from userstyles.org.
  3. You now have a non-distracting Google Search.
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1
  • 1
    Not everybody knows what are user styles and how to use them. Add a brief description to make your answer better.
    – Rubén ♦
    Mar 17, 2016 at 17:25
1

This is what I did to disable the doodles in the Chrome browser:

  1. To disable them in the new tab page, I went to chrome://flags and set

    • #use-google-local-ntp to Enabled and
    • #doodles-on-local-ntp to Disabled

  2. Like someone else suggested, to avoid seeing them on startup I set one of the tabs to this:

https://www.google.com/search?q=+

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1
  • 1
    The flag is gone in Google Chrome 88.
    – Rockallite
    Feb 19, 2021 at 2:16
1

Adblock Plus has "block element" function that worked for me without additional gestures.

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0

A Google employee pointed out that you can search from an empty results page and not see any Doodles:

https://www.google.com/search?q=+

It works for me on my phone, where I can't use Adblock etc.

(It's bizarre how Google's original page was specifically designed to not have any crud like this, and now they go out of their way to force it on us.)

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2
  • 1
    The doodle is still shown at the upper-left corner of the search result page.
    – Rockallite
    Feb 19, 2021 at 2:17
  • The first link is non longer working. As pointed in the previous comment, this "hack" is no longer "working". Now Google shows doodles in the search results page too.
    – Rubén ♦
    Mar 30 at 1:21
0

I replaced Adblock Plus with uBlock Origin, then in its "My filters" tab added:

google.com###lga

For the past few months I was unable to configure Adblock Plus to do that, as it had previously. Reportedly they started charging advertisers to be on the default whitelist.

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0

I don't know if your question is still valid, but I came across this post written by Grant Winney recently:

If installing another browser extension is fine for you, then I recommend you to check Hide Doodles. Grant created an extension available for Firefox and Chrome (which by definition should also work inside the Brave browser since it natively supports Chrome extensions).

If you are want to signal any bugs, have any suggestions or just want to have a look at the source code of his extension, you can head to the github page of his project at the link below:

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-3

The encrypted google page is devoid of doodles: https://encrypted.google.com

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  • 4
    I just went there and the doodle is front and center.
    – phantom42
    Dec 31, 2013 at 20:01

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