Perplexity Hidden Setting: How to Turn Off the Default Computer Mode in Projects

An Easily Overlooked Perplexity Setting

For long-time Perplexity users, the Projects feature has become a core tool for organizing research and centrally managing conversational context. Projects is an advanced feature available to Perplexity Pro subscribers, allowing users to create independent workspaces around specific topics or tasks. Each Project can have custom system instructions (System Prompt), uploaded reference files, a designated AI model, and centralized conversation archives — a design that elevates AI conversations from scattered one-off Q&A sessions into organized, ongoing research workflows.

However, a Reddit user recently shared a previously little-known setting in the community: you can turn off the "Default to Computer" option within each Project/Space.

This may seem like an insignificant toggle, but it has frustrated quite a few users who rely on Perplexity for daily queries and research. Because Computer mode is enabled by default, the system automatically enters this mode every time you open a project and start a query — and not every scenario calls for it.

How to Turn Off Perplexity's Default Computer Mode

Step-by-Step Instructions

According to the user's hands-on testing, the path to disabling this default behavior is quite straightforward:

1. Go to Projects (your project workspace)
2. Click Settings
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and find the Computer section
4. Toggle off "Default to Computer"

You may not have noticed, but this setting is currently visible primarily in the Comet browser and the Perplexity Windows desktop app. Comet is Perplexity's in-house AI browser launched in 2025, deeply integrating Perplexity's AI search capabilities into the browsing experience. Users can invoke AI for content analysis, summarization, and Q&A while browsing the web. One of Comet's core selling points is its Agent capability — AI can perform actions on web pages on behalf of users, such as filling out forms, comparing prices, booking services, and more. This explains why the Computer mode setting is more prominent in Comet.

The original poster explicitly noted that this option was not available on the Perplexity mobile app. This means if you primarily use the phone app, you may not be able to configure this setting for now and will need to use the desktop app or Comet instead.

Each Project Space Requires Individual Configuration

One somewhat tedious aspect: this toggle applies per-Space (per-Project), not as a global configuration. In other words, if you've created multiple Projects, you'll need to manually turn off Computer default mode in each one. For power users managing a large number of projects, this is indeed a pain point requiring repetitive action.

This per-project rather than global configuration design pattern is common in software engineering, reflecting the trade-off between flexibility and convenience. The advantage of per-project configuration is that users can customize behavior for different scenarios — for example, a code development project might genuinely benefit from Computer mode's automation capabilities, while a daily knowledge retrieval project wouldn't need it. The downside is that management costs scale linearly as the number of projects grows. A more ideal approach would typically be a two-tier configuration architecture with "global defaults + project-level overrides," similar to the relationship between Git's global configuration (.gitconfig) and repository-level configuration — satisfying the need for bulk settings while retaining the flexibility to fine-tune on a per-project basis.

As the original poster put it: "While it's annoying that Computer mode is on by default and you have to manually turn it off in each space, at least we now have the option."

Why This Setting Matters

Computer Mode's Purpose and Use Cases

Perplexity's Computer mode is an Agent execution mode, partially inspired by Anthropic's Computer Use feature. In this mode, the AI doesn't just return text answers — it has the ability to perform actual operations within the user's computer or browser environment. This may include opening web pages, clicking buttons, extracting data, comparing information across multiple websites, and other multi-step tasks. The technical foundation of this mode is the AI Agent framework — the system breaks down the user's natural language instructions into a series of executable steps, then completes them sequentially through APIs or simulated operations.

This capability is well-suited for scenarios requiring multi-step, cross-tool task execution. But for the many users whose primary need is "quickly finding answers," defaulting to this mode introduces unnecessary processing overhead and response latency, and may even alter the expected format of responses. Simple factual queries get routed through an Agent execution pipeline, wasting computational resources and making the user experience less direct.

In other words, having it on by default isn't user-friendly for everyone. This touches on a classic UX decision dilemma in product design — the "Default Effect." Research shows that the vast majority of users (typically over 90%) don't proactively change default settings, meaning the default values chosen by the product team effectively determine how most users interact with the product. Tech companies typically face two strategies: "Progressive Disclosure," which defaults to a simple mode and lets advanced users opt into complex features; and "Power Default," which enables the most powerful features by default, assuming users will benefit from full capabilities. Perplexity clearly chose the latter, but the risk of this strategy is that it may confuse or frustrate lightweight users. While products strive for powerful functionality, a "default to maximum capability" design philosophy doesn't necessarily align with every user's most frequent usage patterns. The appropriateness of such default settings is a long-standing trade-off in product experience design.

The Value of Community Discovery

This post itself illustrates the significance of an active user community. Many AI products bury their settings deep, and official documentation doesn't always cover everything promptly. "Tips" like this one, voluntarily shared by ordinary users, can often help a large number of people who encountered the same frustration but didn't know where to start.

For rapidly iterating products like Perplexity, feature updates are frequent, and interfaces and options are constantly evolving. Keeping up with community discussions often lets you learn about practical changes faster than reading official changelogs.

Practical Tips for Perplexity Users

If you've also encountered the "I don't want my project defaulting to Computer mode" situation, follow the steps above to make adjustments on the desktop app or in Comet. Additionally, here are some recommendations:

• Configure on desktop first: The mobile app currently lacks this option, while the desktop app and Comet browser offer more complete functionality.
• Check each project individually: Especially older projects, which likely still have the default enabled.
• Watch for future official improvements: Ideally, Perplexity should provide a global default setting that lets users decide the default behavior for all newly created projects at once, rather than toggling each one manually.

Overall, this is a small but practical tip. It reminds us that when using AI tools with increasingly rich feature sets, taking the time to explore settings in depth can significantly improve the day-to-day user experience.

Key Takeaways