If you prefer Google Assistant, or simply do not want to use a virtual assistant at all, then the Bixby button on the Galaxy S9 is useless to you. Thankfully though, Samsung has given us a way to disable Bixby Home from launching when we press the Bixby button as long as you follow these steps.
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.
It seems like every major technology company these days has its own virtual assistant that they are trying to push on their customers. It actually makes sense to do so as there isn’t a single virtual assistant that has dominated the market right now so the field is completely open. That, and the fact that the more people use a single virtual assistant the better they can make it.
Still, it seems Samsung has been fighting an uphill battle with Bixby and putting in a dedicated hardware button may have made things worse.
A common question among Samsung smartphone owners is how to disable the Bixby virtual assistant. That would be where things stop if it were any other company but Samsung has decided to implement a hardware button dedicated to this feature. So not only do people want to disable the Bixby virtual assistant but they also want to find out how to disable the Bixby button on the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ entirely as it can still prompt you to enable it after it has been disabled.
At least Samsung has built this functionality into the Galaxy S9 and S9+ (as this used to not be possible) and today I’ll show you how it is done.
Disable the Galaxy S9 Bixby Button
- Press the Bixby button to launch Bixby Home
- Skip through the intro tutorial if you haven’t done so already
- Tap the 3-dot menu icon at the top right
- Then tap the Settings option
- Scroll all the way down to the General section
- Tap the Bixby Key option
- So you can choose the Don’t Open Anything option from here
Explanation
Whether you like Google Assistant more, or maybe you don’t care for a virtual assistant at all, Samsung’s customers have been pretty annoyed by the dedicated button for it. Some people didn’t mind at first because it was easy to remap it to do anything else you wanted. However, that was met with friction as Samsung pushed out a software update that prevented it. From here, it was like a cat and mouse game where the developer community would come up with a solution and then Samsung would prevent it.
Thankfully this seems to have ended and I’ll be discussing how we can remap the Bixby button on the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ in a future guide. As a first step, many people just don’t want to launch the Bixby Home application when they accidentally press the Galaxy S9 Bixby button and that’s something that I can completely understand. It can take a while to get used to a smartphone with an extra button so it makes sense that so many companies have held off against using more than the Power and Volume buttons.
LG is about to release one with a dedicated button for virtual assistant and HTC/Google has the squeeze function so maybe it’s something that will happen more and more. Either way, Samsung has finally realized that this can be annoying when the button is accidentally pressed. So, to disable the Galaxy S9 Bixby button from launching Bixby Home when we press on it we first need to dive into the Bixby Home application to begin with. If it’s your first time then you’ll need to skip through some tutorial slides to access the full application.
Now, from here there are two different ways that we can disable this feature and I could see Samsung removing the easier one as they evolve the platform over time. So at first, you can look to see if there is a gear icon at the top right of the Bixby Home screen. If there is, tap it and it could expand a single toggle that lets you disable the Bixby Key. However, you may need to tap on the 3-dot menu icon at the top right, then tap the Settings option and then scroll down until you see the Bixby Key feature here.
From here, simply tap on the Bixby Key option and then tell the Galaxy S9 or the Galaxy S9+ to not open anything when we press the Bixby button.
