How to Open Google Assistant with the Bixby Button on the Galaxy S9

A lot of people like the idea of having another hardware button for custom actions but dislike Bixby on the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+. Fans of Google Assistant can follow these steps to make it so the Bixby button opens it instead of Samsung’s virtual assistant.

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.

I just got done writing a tutorial about how to remap the dedicated Bixby button on the Galaxy S9 to anything you want. While that guide will easily walk you through how to open up Google Assistant when you press it, there are a lot of people who won’t know to search for things like ‘how to remap the Bixby button’ when they want to use it to open up the Google Assistant.

Therefore, I felt it was a good idea to whip up a quick guide for those who specifically want to know how to open Google’s virtual assistant when that button is pressed.

So, if you’ve already read that guide then this one won’t be much different. For everyone else though, you should be aware that Samsung has gone to great lengths to prevent us from changing what happens when we press the Bixby button on their smartphones. The company has actively pushed out new software updates that prevent these types of workarounds from working. So be aware that while the detailed guide works right now, they could push out an update in the future that stops it again.

Galaxy S9 Replace Bixby with Google Assistant

1. Open and setup the Bixby Home application at least once
2. Make sure the Bixby button currently opens Bixby Home
3. Then download the bxActions application from the Play Store
4. Launch the bxActions app and tap the Next button
5. Tap the Get Foreground App toggle and grant the permission
6. Tap the Back button until you’re back to bxActions
7. Then tap the Get Button Events toggle and grant the permission
8. And tap the Back button until you’re back to bxActions again
9. Tap the Done! button at the bottom
10. Tap the App option at the top to start the bxActions application
11. Tap the Buttons option and toggle the Bixby button on
12. Press the Back button
13. And then tap the Actions option
14. Choose the Bixby button to customize
15. Tap the Standard Action option at the top
16. Then scroll through and Choose either Google Assistant or Google Assistant Extra

Explanation

So again, if you followed the guide I wrote up yesterday about how to remap the Galaxy S9 Bixby button then you’re already quite familiar with the bxActions application. There are a number of things that we can do with this application including remapping hardware buttons like the Bixby button. The application has some other features like being able to remap some functionality of the Volume buttons, but changing what happens when we press the Galaxy S9 Bixby button is the big attraction here.

There are a lot of different things that we can open and/or do with the Bixby button with this application. In the guide yesterday I showed you how easy it is to launch a specific application with it but today I’ll be focusing on using it to open Google Assistant. A lot of people enjoy a virtual assistant on their phone but they dislike having it forced on them. It’s nice that Samsung eventually let us disable the button entirely but I really wish they would make it as customizable as HTC has made their squeeze gesture.

In any case, we’ll want to download and install the bxActions application once you are ready to set things up. Once downloaded, open it up and you’ll be greeted with some setup instructions in order to make the application work properly. See, for bxActions to work it needs to detect when you press the Galaxy S9 Bixby button and those permissions aren’t automatically granted to 3rd-party applications. So you’ll need to follow the steps and make sure the Get Foreground App and Get Button Events toggles are setup and enabled within bxActions.

With that done, you can then proceed to the main application page of the application. The first thing we want to do is start the application as a service and then we’re enable remapping for the Bixby button by tapping a toggle within the Buttons section. Go back and then dive into the Actions area so that you can scroll through and select either Google Assistant or Google Assistant Extra. Once you’re happy with your selection, tap the Home button and then test it out by pressing the Bixby button.