While Samsung has made huge improvements to the Bixby assistant in the past year, it’s still not everyone’s cup of tea. Even if you are a fan of the assistant, the placement of the Bixby key can cause plenty of inadvertent taps. Here’s the easiest way to disable the Bixby key.
Samsung’s digital assistant Bixby makest is easy to complete the most common tasks on your phone. Samsung’s goal is to help you complete tasks with your voice that are traditionally done by touch. While Bixby has gotten a lot better since it was first introduced last year, there is still plenty of room for improvement. One of the biggest complaints, however, is people accidentally opening Bixby Home by pressing the Bixby key on the side of the Samsung Galaxy S9, Galaxy S8, and Note 8. If you’re not a fan of the artificially intelligent assistant, or would just prefer to use it with just your voice, you may be able to disable the Bixby key.
There are four modes to Bixby: Bixby Home, Bixby Vision, Bixby Voice, and Bixby Reminders. The latter is an app you can access, and you can press and hold the Bixby key to use Bixby Voice to talk to the assistant. Open the camera and tap the Bixby icon to open Bixby Vision, and swipe to the right on the home screen to open Bixby Home. Home also opens when you press the physical Bixby key.
For the time being, you can easily disable the Bixby key, unless you’re the proud owner of a Samsung Galaxy Note 9. Samsung decided to make the Bixby Key non-negotiable on its newest flagship. And while most Galaxy owners with the Bixby key can disable it by following the steps below, there’s no option to remap the button.
So how do you wave goodbye to Bixby? If you have a Galaxy S9 or S9 Plus, you will be able to disable it simply by going into its settings. Once you have the most recent version of Bixby, swipe right from the home screen to open Bixby and select the gear icon. From there, you should immediately see the toggle to stop Bixby from activating when the button is pressed.
If, after stopping the Bixby Key from working, you miss the virtual assistant, it’s easy to bring Bixby back either by swiping to the Bixby Home screen, or with your voice. If you set up voice activation, you can also simply say, “Hey Bixby” to open the assistant.
