Category: Samsung Bixby

If there has been once consistent complaint from owners of the Samsung Galaxy S8 or the Note8, it has been the dedicated Bixby button.  Bixby is Samsung’s personal assistant and it was rolled out well after the Galaxy S8 was released.  While Samsung did a fair amount of hyping of the AI-based assistant, it somewhat fell flat and users almost immediately began trying to figure out how to remap the dedicated button for the assistant on the phones.

Samsung squashed most of those but have finally given into customer demands.  There is a new update in the Galaxy App store that should roll out to all S8 and Note8 owners that will disable the button.

Note that this will disable the button.  You still can’t remap it, officially at least.  Samsung won’t let you remap the button to say Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.

Samsung has finally started allowing the Bixby button on the S8 lineup and the new Note8 to be disabled… well, partially at least.  Bixby is Samsung’s assistant built into these phones and one of the biggest complaints about the Galaxy S8 lineup when it was released this summer was the fact that the dedicated hardware button for the assistant could not be disabled or remapped (to say Google Assistant).  Samsung stood by their decision and despite numerous hacks to get around this (which Samsung subsequently closed with software updates), pretty much forced the issue with users.  Until this past weekend.

A small software update for the Galaxy S8, S8 Plus and Note8 is allowing the button to be partially disabled.  In the Bixby settings, you can disable to button although it will still fire up if you long press the button.  The software update does not allow for remapping of the button.