The Samsung Galaxy S10’s Bixby button can be remapped, here’s how to do it
Samsung introduced its own virtual assistant alongside the Galaxy S8 and went all-in with the effort to promote its use over Google Assistant by building a dedicated button used to trigger Bixby. The button survived through to the S9, and now to the S10, but with one subtle difference.
The buttons only purpose was to launch Bixby but since a majority of people preferred to use Google Assistant, a number of apps started appearing in the Play Store that allowed the function of the button to be re-mapped. The loophole that the apps used to intercept and remap the function of the Bixby button was closed by Samsung, much to the disappointment of the Android community, but showed the company really wanted people to use Bixby.
With the Galaxy S10, it seems Samsung has relaxed the restriction and now allows the Bixby button on the S10 to be remapped natively without the use of any 3rd-party apps. Within the settings, there are now two options for the Bixby button: “Single press to open Bixby,” and “Double press to open Bixby.” You are now able to change one of those actions to launch Google Assistant, for example. However, it’s worth noting that whichever action you don’t choose to customize will retain that function. So if you’re launching Google Assistant with a single press, then a double press will still open Bixby. Holding down the button will still trigger Bixby Voice.
The question remains to be seen if the ability to remap the Bixby button will make its way down to the other Galaxy devices, such as the S9 or Note 9, with One UI.
How to remap the Bixby button on the Samsung Galaxy S10
- Open the Bixby screen
- Tap Menu > Settings >Bixby Key
- Select “Single Press to open Bixby” or “Double press to Open Bixby”
- Scroll through the list of apps and tap the app you want the action to be remapped to
It’s as simple as that. Finally, a hardware button that can be used for what you want!
Source: The Verge