How to disable the Bixby key on your Galaxy S8

If you are the owner of a Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8 Plus or Galaxy Note 8, chances are you are frustrated by the physical button on the side that calls up Bixby. Bixby was supposed to be a major voice assistant that could rival the Google Assistant and Siri. However, thanks in part to a delay in rollout by Samsung, the feature never took off. Most people disliked it. What users disliked even more was the inclusion of a button to call up Bixby.

Users called for an option to wire the button to a different function. While earlier versions of Samsung Galaxy S8 pair gave the user the freedom to use the button for another function. Samsung quickly retracted the feature. This was probably because the company wanted to push the voice assistant to the masses.

Injong Rhee, Executive VP and Head of R&D, Software and Services at Samsung, told the following.

"We got a lot of anger, a lot of emails from many, many people [saying]: "Wouldn’t it be nice if I could map it to camera?","

"But what I’m saying is that this is such a sticky area. I mean, people don’t see it right now but once they start seeing the behaviour behind Bixby I don’t think they’ll want to map it to anything else."

But now that the feature is not popular, Samsung has made it possible to remove the functionality.

To switch it off, open up Bixby. You will then see a toggle at the top of the app. You"ll then be greeted by a pop-up that asks whether you want to turn the feature off forever. Once you reach this stage tap the option that reads "Don"t open anything".



If this feature is not available, you will have to visit the the Galaxy App store on your phone to push the update through.

Samsung is finally letting Galaxy S8 owners disable the Bixby button

As impressed as we were with the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ at launch, we couldn’t help but question Samsung’s decision to put a dedicated Bixby button on the side of the phones. Bixby was meant to be Samsung’s answer to Google Assistant, but until recently, Bixby Voice wasn’t even accessible to S8 owners outside of South Korea. But now, just six months after the S8’s launch, Samsung is already walking back its Bixby plans.

On Monday, SamMobile was the first to report that Samsung had quietly begun rolling out an update to allow S8 owners to disable the Bixby button altogether. Once you install the latest Bixby updates on your S8, S8+ or Note 8, you should see a toggle at the top of the Bixby Home screen that will allow you to choose whether or not Bixby launches when you hit the Bixby button. The toggle also appears in the Bixby settings menu.

Bixby Home can still be accessed at any time by swiping left on the home screen, but at the very least, you’ll no longer accidentally go to the Bixby Home screen when you meant to turn down the volume. The fact that this appears to be such a welcome change for so many users probably isn’t a great sign for Bixby.

Interestingly, SamMobile also notes that not all S8, S8+ and Note 8 devices have received the update yet. The rollout seems to be random up to this point, so keep an eye out if you have a phone with a Bixby button.