How do I turn off the automatic Google search function when I highlight text in Pages?

Hey there, I ran into this same (or similar) issue with Pages when using my MBP trackpad. When I manually click down/hold my thumb and use my index finger to drag/select/highlight text, I am interrupted with a search box (see screenshot). After a little digging, I found this is connected to the haptic feedback on the trackpad and not a setting within Pages.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION (16" MBP - 2023; macOS Sonoma 14.0):

1. Go to Settings; Trackpad (shortcut: spotlight search for 'trackpad')

2. Under the 'Point & Click' tab, there is an option called 'Look up & Data Detectors'. Change the setting to 'Off' or 'Tap with three fingers' to stop the interruption. (To turn haptic feedback off completely, unselect the option 'Force click & haptic feedback")

3. Test in Pages; Celebrate!

Hope this helps.

There is no automatic (or otherwise) Google search feature in Pages for Mac. When you apply a comment in Pages, a small dialog panel opens for you to enter your comment text and when you click Done, that comment is placed in the Pages document margin. A proper text highlight is not from the Insert menu, but rather from the Text Background Color inkwell/chooser located on the More Text Options (⚙️v) menu on the text panel.

Unrelated to Comment, if you right-click on a word in Pages, you will see Look up "word" on the contextual menu which then attempts to locate the "word" in the configured Apple Dictionaries. If Wikipedia is among those it too will be used. But not Google or any other search engine.

I cannot duplicate this on Pages v13.2 for iOS or Mac. A secondary menu has Lookup menu item on it in Pages, and that is intended solely to look through the selected ordered dictionaries in the Dictionary application. Although there is a selectable Wikipedia in those Dictionaries, there is no Google search, nor is there any Google search involved in the Insert menu > Highlight or Comment menu items.

Share the version of Pages you are using, the operating system, and on what device. Explain in detail what you are doing to cause this "Google Search" to take place during your process of highlighting text. A screen capture of that dialog posted back here using the Image Insertion tool on this editor's toolbar would be helpful.

There is an automatic Google search and it is annoying as ****. The selected text becomes bright yellow and a box containing search results pops up. It is a useless function and stop work flow regularly.

Thank you so much, AmandaKay0185! I will celebrate and toast your name regularly!!