Samsung already gives you the ability to disable the Galaxy S9 Bixby button but they still won’t let you change its function. However, we can now change and remap the Bixby button on the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+ with a free application in the Google Play Store.
Note – As Samsung has kept their software up to date, you’ll want to refer to this guide if the software on your device is up to date as well. The method below will still work, but you may find this native version more useful.
Samsung’s virtual assistant, Bixby has been controversial among the Android enthusiast community for a number of reasons. Many feel yet another virtual assistant isn’t needed but it’s easy to understand why companies don’t want to rely on Google too much. Beyond that, there are a number of people who aren’t a fan of Samsung using a dedicated button for it.
Which again, if it helps to increase engagement with Bixby then it’s something that I can easily understand from a business perspective.
However, many feel the lengths that Samsung has gone to lock down the use of the Bixby button for other uses is a bit too far. HTC has a squeeze feature that they’re very open with letting the customer customize but Samsung has pushed multiple updates to prevent people from remapping the Bixby button on their devices. It seems they were willing to meet people half way and implement a way to disable the Bixby button on the Galaxy S9 and S9+, but if the button is always going to be there then we should be able to change it to anything we want.
Since it was first introduced, there’s been a cat and mouse game going on between Samsung and community developers. So while the method detailed below currently works, it could change in the future if Samsung decides to push back yet again.
How to Remap the Galaxy S9 Bixby Button
- Make sure the Bixby button is currently enabled
- And swipe through the Bixby Home intro cards to set it up
- Then download the bxActions application from the Play Store
- Open up the application and tap the Next button
- Tap the Get Foreground App toggle and grant the permission
- Tap the Back button to get back to bxActions
- Then tap the Get Button Events toggle and grant the permission
- And tap the Back button to get back to bxActions again
- Tap the Done! button at the bottom
- Tap the App option at the top to start the bxActions application
- Tap the Actions button
- Choose the Bixby button to customize
- Tap the Standard Action option at the top
- Then scroll through and figure out what you want the Bixby button to do when pressed
Explanation
The guide above can seem complex when compared to the standard features that Samsung has built into their version of Android. However, most of this stuff is single time setup steps so that you can give the bxActions application the proper permissions it needs. These permissions are required because Android doesn’t usually give this type of platform access to 3rd-party applications installed from the Play Store. It’s definitely not something you would want to do for your basic Flashlight app but it’s okay in this instance.
As mentioned, we need to make sure the Bixby Home application has been opened at least once and that you have gone through all the tutorial steps ahead of time. We basically just want the Bixby Home application to open up like it wants to and display the cards that Samsung has setup before we proceed. With that done, you will also need to make sure that you haven’t previously disabled the Bixby button as well. Since I just showed you how to disable it, it’s best to go into the Bixby Home application and make sure it isn’t disabled.
From here we can go ahead and install and open up the bxActions application from the Play Store. We’re greeted with a very user friendly setup page that shows we need to enable a couple of permissions for the application to work properly. To do this, tap on the Get Foreground App toggle that we see on the screen and then grant the proper permission to the bxActions application (there’s even an animation that shows you how this is done). With that enabled, press the Back button until we are back at the bxActions application and then tap the Get Button Events toggle.
Just like before, we’ve shown an animation so that we understand what we need to do here but we can skip that and just scroll down so we can grant the permission to the bxActions application again. We will once again tap the Back button again until we’re back at the bxActions application. If done properly then we should see a Done! button at the bottom that takes us to the actual meat of the bxActions application. From here, we need to first start the application as a service (so it is listening for that bxActions button press).
With that done, we’re then able to tell the application we want to remap the Galaxy S9 Bixby button to something else. I really recommend that you browse through this page as there are a lot of different things that we can choose here. Everything from triggering a shortcut, to launching an application, or even toggling the torch/flashlight on or off with a simple press of a button. Once you have picked what you want, go ahead and tap the Home button and then press the Galaxy S9 Bixby button to see if it has been remapped properly.
