We’ve said before, and we’ll say it again: Bixby sucks. You’re better off using Google Assistant any day of the week. The good news is, it’s now possible to remap the pointless Bixby button without using a third-party app.
You Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Bixby
Bixby is a pretty pointless addition to Galaxy Phones, and you’d be hard-pressed to name anything Bixby can do that Google Assistant can’t do better. Disabling Bixby typically tops our list of how to improve a new Samsung phone.
Unfortunately, until recently, you couldn’t do much about the Bixby button that Samsung insists slapping on phones like the Galaxy S8, S9, S10, Note 8, and Note 9. You could turn it off, but then you’d be left with an equally pointless button that does nothing. The good news is, with new updates you can now remap the Bixby button without having to resort to other apps. The bad news is, you can’t turn it off entirely anymore. But there’s a second best option. Here’s what to do.
Note: It’s not currently possible to remap the Bixby button to invoke the Google Assistant (or any other digital assistant). Just another app.
Remapping the Bixby Button
The first thing you’ll have to do is open the Bixy app, so go ahead and hit that Bixby button to launch it. Once the app opens (and you run through any setup it may require), tap on the three vertical dots at center-right of the screen.
Tap the “Settings” option.
First, you’ll want to make sure the Bixby app is up to date, or you won’t get the remap option. Scroll down and choose “About Bixby.”
Bixby needs to be on at least version 2.1.04.18 for this to work. If you don’t have that, tap the update button.
After the update, tap the three vertical dots and tap “Settings” again. Scroll down and find “Bixby Key.” Tap on that.
You can’t completely disable Bixy anymore, which is terrible. The next best thing is to choose the “Double press to open Bixby” option, you’re unlikely to double press by accident.
Under the “double press” option toggle on the “use single” press option, this will let you remap the single press to another app.
On the next screen, you can choose “Open app” or “run quick command.” To set the single press to something like Google Assistant, choose Open app.
Then scroll to the app you want to use and tap it—in this case, the Google app.
And now your Bixby button is more useful. This isn’t perfect, and it’d be great if you could turn off Bixby entirely. But at least you’re less likely to accidentally trigger it. And if you don’t want the button to do anything, you can get close to it—just make Bixby a double press and don’t assign anything to the single press option.
