How to Remove Bixby from Samsung Phones | Hacker News Reader

How to Remove Bixby from Samsung Phones

darpandodiya.com

199 pointsrolph115 comments

The bixby button is super annoying. At least on the Note 8 it is positioned such that in certain situations it's really hard not to activate it when trying to turn off the phone because it's directly opposite it on the other side. Pretty much the only times I have ever activated Bixby is when trying to turn off the device, and the result is that it immediately turns on and makes a loud noise - very annoying in meetings.

It's one thing to force something benign in front of your users, it's quite another to do actively hostile things to them.

Same thing happened when a relative got an iPhone XR, the screenshot button is volume + power, so trying to lock it regularly has them taking screenshots.

Same thing happens to me. Heinously annoying.

And siri instead of power down? How is that not more annoying than a dedicated bixby key that isn't in the place where you would expect a power button?

My brother literally couldn't figure out how to turn his phone off, how is this a two button combo???

Why would you dedicate a button to a function you hardly ever use???

Well, the button is already dedicated to turning off the screen and on previous iPhones, holding it down gave you the option to turn it off.

Now, holding it down brings up Siri, which now dedicates a button to a function I literally never use. I shutdown my phone at least once a month, whether that’s to do a simple restart, while at a no-phones event, or to save battery.

Now, you have to hold down the power button and the volume button to not only turn off the phone, but to access emergency SOS. If I’m in an emergency situation, I might not have the dexterity to do that with one hand or both hands free to do it with both. I have to use the latter considering how big the phones are now (iPhone X). My one hand is big enough to hold both buttons at the same time, but I need the other hand just to get the one in the right position.

I believe there is an additional SOS setting for pressing the ON\OFF button five times consecutively that has been around since at least my iPhone SE.

Not on the iPhone 8 and newer.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208076

The Siri button on touchbar Macs is another variant of this issue. And that “would you like to enable speech to text?” is another.

This is why I always remove Siri from the Touchbar first thing.

You can reassign the button in settings - mine opens up whatsapp, but you can easily configure it to open the camera.

You can't do that in Android on the S9+, nor on any variants that i know of on Android 8 or 9. All you can do is restrict it to a long press. If you have a link to reassignment, I'd like to see it.

Go to Settings, and search for Bixby Key.

I don't know how to guide you through the menus, sorry.

Similar situation on the iPhone: I no longer use the physical volume button to take a picture (which is a shame) because, starting with the 6/6S it is exactly opposite the power button. As a result, the phone keeps turning off instead of taking a picture.

Author of the article here, I was getting constant notifications from WordPress about "booming traffic". Wondered why the sudden spike, surprised to know it was coming from Hacker News.

Feels good! :)

Having been there 10 times or so in different contexts, I can confirm: hitting HN's first page is one of the best rides out there as far as attention goes.

your welcome dude from OP, thanx for the article

Well done on the clarity of the article and the time you take to hand-hold any less technical readers who may be nervous about making changes like this to their phone. I'm sure they appreciate it.

Thank you!

   Long live ADB and long dead Bixby. :-)

I don't have a Samsung phone, I read your page mostly so I could see what it entails. That was hilarious to read. Thanks for the good article!

Adb is powerful. You can rip out most bloatware without root.

Hahha! I am a Samsung user for past few years now. Have absolutely no complaints apart from this Bixby bloatware.

Uses a nice trick to uninstall built-in bloatware apps on a phone (removing them "only for the default user", since removing them system wide requires rooting the phone). I guess you don't reclaim the storage space but at least you're free from having to deal with it. Bixby is especially annoying, and at least on earlier Galaxy phones, so obnoxious that it requires creating a Samsung account just so you can deactivate the hard key mapped to Bixby -- the big win here is that you no longer have to create a Samsung account to prevent Bixby from being summoned inadvertently.

It is possible to disable bixby services and apps via the android app manager, to some degree. Once you disable the main Bixby apps, the button stops working.

I've sworn off of Samsung after owning many Samsung flagship devices over the years. I now have OnePlus 7 Pro and it is the best phone I've ever owned. I'm never going back to Samsung. There are other manufacturers building much better Android phones than Samsung.

Better how? I just got an S10+ a few weeks ago and as far as I'm aware it's close to top-of-the-line all around. There were some other candidates like Google's but I wanted real FM radio and a headphone jack among other things that were hard to find a combination of. Extremely satisfied so far.

Not better objectively, Samsung is still the top of the line of android HW, but theres so many good phones that do all of the basics well, such as the Oneplus 7 Pro, Pixel 3A, Asus Zenphone and really quite a few even Huawei have excellent hardware and mostly caught up to the high bar set by samsung.

Samsung's only differentiation right now is their proprietary software, Samsung Pay, DeX, Linux on DeX and other toys they make for corporate clients and certain markets like USA

Samsung Pay is a toy? It was easier to set up from the Chase app than Google Pay and it works well.

I personally replaced my wallet with Samsung Pay but many people find it hard to use/explain to cashiers that don't understand it works everywhere. In countries outside of USA the bank support is also pretty bad/contactless payments are more widely supported.

I dont find it to be a toy but some people don't believe its important to have a good mobile wallet. Apple could have adopted LoopPay before samsung aquired them but now I'm kinda stuck buying samsung phones/watches just so I can use MST haha

Huawei seem to have better cameras than anyone else at the moment, so there's that. V.Happy with my P20 Pro

Not sure how's DeX on the phones, but my brother recently bought a new Samsung tablet and I'm thoroughly impressed by how DeX works. In fact, having no peripherals to connect it to, he still runs the tablet in DeX mode all the time - because that's how much it's better than regular Android experience.

I've been saying for years that Windows 10 is the only sane, productivity-oriented OS for tablets. DeX makes me want to reconsider Android in this role again.

DeX on phone presents the same interface but allows me to use a 27inch monitor which give me more room to use Premiere, Linux on DeX and other apps. I have completely replaced my macbook pro with this setup and like my tab s4 with DeX more than a surface pro.

Windows still has its upsides but I carry my damn computer in my pocket now. Can't beat my portable setup!

DeX allowed me to use android much more like a chromebook and less like an android phone, so liberating since all the mouse support and peripheral support is there. Enables me to be a very nimble and streamlined youtuber.

Tons of options for both recording and livestreaming games from DeX and editing footage in Premiere or Kinemaster is awesome. Can realistically film and edit just about anything with just my s10.

And having a 3.5mm jack, which only LG still does as well.

Yep! I run an LG V20, and I love the audio from it- it has a really nice DAC setup that's kept me from needing to buy expensive headphones / earbuds.

The screen is insanely good. The software has very little bloat. Like none. No always exposed front facing camera! It's a pop out, and so there's no way there's any software could be spying on you without you seeing the camera physically pop out. The hardware quality is superb, it handles and feels like an amazingly well built device, there's nothing cheap about it. It's less expensive than other flagship devices with similar specs. The camera app is very speedy and easy to use and the phone takes great pictures.

I recommend Marques Brownlee's review:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVWLD3064Ng

Some drawbacks that he doesn't mention:

Getting used to no front facing camera takes getting used to. There's no autobrightness! The phone doesn't know when you put your ear up to it! I was able to get used to these things.

I have found the under the screen finger print reader taking some time to get used to. It was frustrating at first, but I eventually got it down. The key is to remember that the screen might be dirty if it fails to read your fingerprint.

> Getting used to no front facing camera takes getting used to. There's no autobrightness! The phone doesn't know when you put your ear up to it!

Technically, this is not because of the lack of front-facing camera; these things are handled by a separate front-facing sensors (that's why smartphones usually have more than one camera-like thingies on top). They could've retained those features while doing away with front-facing cam; I guess they wanted to go all in and stretch the screen all the way to the phone's top edge.

>There's no autobrightness!

Yes there is. The ambient light sensor is under the display.

>The phone doesn't know when you put your ear up to it!

Either yours is broken or you're 'holding it wrong', because mine works fine for both features...

It definitely doesn't work for me. I'll ask the store. Thanks.

OnePlus is great, very close to Android stock. Samsung has so much crapware...

- when you search for an app and it's not on your phone, the first place it wants to take you to, before the Play Store, is the freaking Galaxy store (who uses that?!)

- the share panel contains a giant ad for some online storage service by Samsung

- the built-in system utility apps use a different version upgrade system than the play store, requiring you to approve some of them manually

Etc.

Feels like hardware is good but is used to peddle inferior services.

I'm quite fond of my Note 9 also. It has a Bixby button, but it's less annoying on this model, I guess; when I push it accidentally, I just get a little pop-up saying "To start Bixby, press and hold the Bixby key". Hasn't really gotten in my way.

This is my second Galaxy Note model; I've also had a Note 4. Pace Steve Jobs, I really do love having the stylus.

I'm curious about the problems did you encounter when on Samsung devices? Personally, I've thoroughly enjoyed the two Samsung phones I've owned so far: S7 Edge and S10+.

Briefly considered the OnePlus 7 Pro before purchasing my S10+, but the below par camera, lack of a headphone jack and other compromises was a deal breaker for me. They seemed to have improved the Camera performance since launch though.

I've had so many issues with Samsung devices.

I had the original Galaxy, the GPS didn't work. At all. It was a minor scandal at the time.

I also owned a Galaxy S3, S5, S7 Edge and the S8 Edge.

I have had phones freeze when trying to answer a call. After an Android version upgrade, the phones usually got much slower, much worse performance. You know I don't really remember all the issues, but I remember that each time I upgraded to the next version I was hoping some horrible thing I was dealing with would be fixed in the next version only for the next version to have it's own horrible problem. I eventually gave up and switched to LG. I owned an LGv30 and LGv40 and now I'm using the OnePlus 7 Pro.

> I have had phones freeze when trying to answer a call. After an Android version upgrade, the phones usually got much slower, much worse performance.

Interesting. Because of those exact issues I abandoned LG and my wife abandoned Huawei, and we both run on Samsung flagships, on which we never had that happen.

I wonder if anyone ever published a root-cause analysis of problems like "otherwise seemingly stable Android freezes when trying to answer a call". It's a ridiculous thing to happen to a smartphone, and yet it keeps happening. I don't want to criticize too much as it's not as if I could write a better OS myself, but God I miss the old feature-phone experience, with soft-realtime OSes that had more-less stable delays on everything, so you could quickly learn to operate it without looking, as you knew how long doing any given thing would take.

It's ok to criticize them heavily: they're multi-billion dollar companies, you're the client and "As a user I want to use my phone to receive calls" is one of the most essential use cases.

The main problems I've had with Samsung devices have been due to the fact that Samsung so heavily customizes Android, it's virtually impossible for them to deliver Android updates on any kind of reasonable schedule.

At least now, Samsung delivers updates. At one point, not so long ago, any non-flagship Samsung device was stuck on the version of Android that it shipped with, unless you were willing to root it and install your own ROM.

Then, there's the fact that Samsung insists on shipping its own e-mail, messaging and contact management applications, which are very difficult to back up. There's nothing quite like having to tell someone who bought a new phone that they have to type out all of their contacts by hand, because they used Samsung's contacts app instead of Google's.

Contacts can be easily exported to a file and imported

I'm pretty sure you can sync your contacts to a Samsung account pretty much the same way as you do with Google? I don't use it, but I see the option there on my S10+.

There are ways around any "difficulties" in backing up Galaxy phone data. I use essentialpim.com's EPIM windows application to manage my contacts, appointments, notes, etc on my Win10 PC. The free accompanying phone app syncs wirelessly with my PC, and the sync can be one-way either direction or both ways, user selectable. I've never hand typed any of that data into my phones, unless I did it voluntarily.

How so? No waterproofing, worse camera, worse battery life, much chunkier..

The battery is excellent, the phone is water resistant, it's just not rated as water proof, I'm a large person and I don't need my phones to be as thin as paper, I don't mind large phones. It's not thick at all.

Bixby is the worst. I switched to a Huawei because of it, which is a shame - I loved my previous Samsungs right up until you accidentally bumped that button.

I find it hard to believe that a single button would cause you to jump ship. Especially since you claimed to love the Samsung flagships you had. Perhaps there were other frustrations the Huawei solved for you?

I was happy with the Galaxy S7. Got an S9. This and some other tricky-to-remove bloat like Samsung Pay is enough to have moved me from "happy with stock ROM" to "not going to buy another Samsung device for the foreseeable future".

Out of curiosity, are you using an Android One phone now or something a little less bloated, but still bloated?

I haven't settled on my next phone yet. Aiming at either one of the more secure and clean phones, something I can flash with Linux (like Librem 5 or some Android device that has high compatibility with PostmarketOS, might be too premature though) or a Pixel 3 with https://github.com/dan-v/rattlesnakeos-stack.

A single button did indeed cause me to jump ship.

Android devices are functionally pretty similar, and at the time the Huawei and Samsung scored the same ratings for their cameras and had near-as-makes-no-difference performance. So it was an easy decision. Samsung had a rage-inducing button, the Huawei did not.

> I find it hard to believe that a single button would cause you to jump ship.

Why is this hard to believe? The smartphone market is currently very saturated, with only very limited differences between high-end (or even low-end) models of different brands. If one brand has something stupid (especially to the tune of "annoys me every day", like the mentioned button) it seems to me that it's fairly obvious you would switch.

There are a lot of differences that Samsung adds into their firmware that many people seem to like. Particularly if you get one of the Galaxy Note series devices, it goes well beyond what I would consider "very limited differences."

You are convinced that I am incorrect, but I can't actually see from your response in what way I am incorrect. What are those much acclaimed firmware differences? What makes the Galaxy Note especially "well beyond" competitors, I am assuming even compared to the rest of the line (what are the differences between those?). This way, maybe you will enhance my life with some new knowledge. Maybe I'll even agree with you. Who knows!

S9+ owner. Yeah, Bixby button is very annoying. The worst is that you have to register to their service in order to tone the button down a bit.

After toning it down, a single press doesn't do anything, but sometimes I do accidentally long press while trying to adjust volume or grabbing the phone. The Bixby update screen that pops up doesn't respect back button at all, need to click cancel.

Samsung should instead make it freely configurable button, including ability to completely disable it.

I passed on a new Samsung because of the Bixby button. I dont' want it or need it, but I couldn't find a way to remap it... So I returned for an iPhone 8 Plus

You can now remap it

You can remap it right in the settings by default on my S10+. I can't imagine returning such a great phone over it having a button you don't have to press though, especially for an iPhone.

Voting with their wallet is a noble thing to do and is the only outcome that would actually force the company to reconsider such shenanigans in the future.

Perhaps they want a phone that doesn't irritate them. A button with no purpose but annoyance that is easily pressed by accident and cannot be disabled (until recently apparently) is reason enough not to buy a phone.

Yeah, if you're worried about not being able to disable or remap things according to your preferences iOS is totally the phone OS for you...

It's a remapable button.

A quick search indicates the iPhone 8+ is a couple years old so perhaps the Samsung phones at the time didn't have that ability. The main thing I've heard about Samsung phones from the people I know is complaints that the Bixby button is useless and cannot be remapped.

On older Samsungs, you have to install an app to remap the Bixby button. Slightly inconvenient, but after 5 minutes effort I have a Google Assistant button which is handy

Yeah and for newer software which has rolled out to all bixby equipped phones by now it lets you use it as a trigger.

I have mine set to open the Google Camera whenever I want, never have any issues with it.

Sorry, that's just adding another "feature" to the button. It's still tied to Bixby if you hit it twice. (Or once if you set things the other way.) While technically this is mapping, it's not what I would be looking for in a remarkable button.

Note that while this might not be a smooth UX, you can remove/disable Bixby via ADB without root and install your favorite button remapped from the play store in a few minutes to remap single, double and long press.

It's a remapable button through some random shady apps from Play Store. My wife has S9, we opted out of remapping it precisely because we don't trust random apps on Play Store that answer a popular demand[0], and I have no time right now to write one myself.

EDIT: So it seems that it is remapable without third-party apps now because of a recent update. That's better.

[0] - Not without someone I trust vouching for it, at least.

When you say you're passing on a Samsung for that reason and you get an iPhone there is another primary reason.

I can - I have a Note8, and I was constantly accidentally pressing the Bixby button, until I paid for a little app on appstore to disable it. Not even usefully remap it, just make it go away.

I don't even want to think what else the app might be doing in the background. But that's what they're forcing us to do by having such ridiculous un-disablable behaviour. (note - it was not disableable through any easy let alone delivered means 14 months ago; things may have changed for the better?)

Wow cool can you do that on an S9? I'm gonna try right now. I'm of the same opinion, Bixby is useless...

Edit: looks like I can't on my S9, or don't have the latest version...

Its buried in Bixby settings, so the classic way with BxActions is still more reliable if you're not on the exact update of Android Pie (OneUI) that has bixby button options.

For anyone who’s wondering if this is a physical button or an on-screen button and what it looks like, you can see it here:

https://www.phonearena.com/image.php?m=Articles.Images&f=nam...

(The cartoon mocking Bixby in the second image is priceless.)

If you disable can the bixby button be remapped (without any of those apps that require crazy deep permissions)?

Yes - you can do it now https://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-remap-bixby-button-9...

The "How to natively remap the Bixby button" mentioned on AndroidAuthority requires you have a Samsung / Bixby account which is annoying b/c I don't want to give my information for a function I don't want. I ended up installing the bxActions app but it requires multiple permissions.

Is there any phone manufacturer that doesn't require an account to access significant functionality?

A Samsung account is required to use the very basics of the phone anyway, same as a Google one is and same as an Apple one is on iOS.

I've been using my S9 for over a year without having a Samsung account, and I don't intend to create one. What basic functionality requires an account?

Backup and updating the core applications.

S9 user here, never signed up and will never use a samsung account. Its definitely not needed for nearly any function of the phone.

Yep! Just all of the cloud services, like bixby and the such. If you have no need for them then it is not required at all.

Bixby unfortunately is setup such that to disable it the official way you need to sign in, but you can disable it the old way whenever you like and theres no need to create an account.

That method requires the bixby app. I don't think it works if the app is removed.

Considering how insistent Samsung is on keeping this in front of customer faces (and fingers) I wonder if there are any more hidden purposes of Bixby?

I don't think you appreciate the stickiness of OEM apps. If Samsung just launched a photo sharing app on the Play Store, it would be ignored. By putting it on 10M desktops labelled as "Photos" they probably get themselves 1M users. Tie it in to their smart TVs and now you're as embedded in Samsung as you would be in Google. It's extremely effective. A stupefying number of mobile users are browsing the web with Samsung Internet.

I have peeps who visit my webserver often, and they cant get to it with samsung internet over mobile, but as soon as they get on a hotspot its not a problem. there seems to be some intervention when samsng apps are used, instead of FF on a hotspot. There is probably something about my page samsng finds offending but the solution is quick and easy. i can only imagine what bixby might do, as it never gone that far yet.

Samsung internet is old chromium for android, so they lag a few versions behind and break some things relative to stable chrome.

This causes issues often with smart TV's that run some of our web portals, as they almost never update samsung internet on the TV haha

To be fair, Samsung's internet browser is actually a pretty solid piece of software. I bought my S9+ well over a year ago and prefer their browser over most other mobile browsers. It does adblocking and Dark mode effortlessly, especially the latter, which is super critical when you have a great OLED screen and are browsing at night.

I'm a diehard FireFox user on desktops/laptops but I have had no complaints about Samsung's mobile browser. Some people just seem to like shitting on anything Samsung in the software space without realizing that they are more than capable of writing good software.

Suprised me too and I didn't give it a shot until I really dove into using DeX as my primary computer and found chrome's lack of extensions absurd. Samsung internet is just a few versions behind stable chrome and has all the creature comforts safari seems to have which makes for a pleasant experience.

Also people forget Samsung runs a huge ecosystem of products that work together. They have a VR partnership with oculus and maintain a VR branch of chrome for their own apps and stuff, and also support running arbitrary android apps in VR in multi window mode. They seem to really care about pushing how much you can do without downloading a single app outside of their software ecosystem.

> Some people just seem to like shitting on anything Samsung

I had an S5 once (awesome phone) that was basically unusable with the official rom. I believe they switched the back and menu buttons and they had a lot of crapware installed. Was awesome with unoffical distributions though. So did they improve in the last few years?

I actually like manufacturers like Nokia a lot more who basically just install vanilla android and are very quick to provide updates. This is day and night compared to most phones 5 years ago.

Eh, I really don't subscribe to this mentality that stock Android is somehow superior and that all manufacturers should just make hardware and ship with stock Android. I say this as someone who drank the stock Android kool-aid, rooted and ROM'd more phones and ROMs than I can remember and owned a couple of (disappointing) Nexus devices.

My favorite phones to date have been my older LG G3 and my current S9+. I absolutely enjoy custom tweaks in both manufacturers Android flavors. Knock codes on the G3 were fantastic in addition to tap to wake and the LG G3 window case.

Which is great because they use something different than Chrome or Chrome mod. Same with Safari, they help slow advance of walled and closed Googlenet.

I tried using Bixby when I first got my S10+, but it wasn't a good experience. So I've largely ignored it and remapped the button to open the camera instead.

That being said, I still use Bixby routines to automate a bunch of stuff on my phone.

It's insane you have to use ADB for this, and seems like Samsung is hate-selling Bixby to users.

You could run Lineage OS to accomplish this, but aside from being a pain to install it's not fantastic in terms of security.

Curiously, how exactly is Lineage OS not "fantastic in terms of security"?.

LOS merges upstream AOSP security commits and updates, often faster than most OEMs and isn't delayed by carrier testing (negative or positive, depending on your views). There are also more options for security- or pricacy-focused demands, up to the user to implement.

Will this technique work for any bloatware found on Android?

You got that right. You can use it to disable any pre-installed app

Here goes with the Android weather app on Lenovo P10 which is super-annoying

Like Google Assistant?

It also works for those phones Amazon sells (or used to sell, haven't kept up) with ads embedded.

myself i was looking for a disassembly tute or facsimilie. Something that reveals any suprises you might have when you open your phone and physically remove the button, or jumper it to another button, i found this article down that rabbit hole.

@gif thank you

1. Enjoys "cancer free device"

2. Has Google Assistant and other Google bloatware installed

....

Okay

I tried Samsung S8 a few years ago and nope'ed out immediately. Switch to iPhone, I promise you - none of these stupid shenanigans.

Right. No buttons but instead the software we don't want to use is the unchangeable default.

At least you can turn Siri (and voice dialing) off. My phone does nothing without touching it and interacting with it, which is pretty enjoyable.

At the risk of being downvoted I can't overlook how whiny some people in this thread are.

What's whiny about not wanting to give your personal data to yet another company? Every other week there is a thread about another huge database leak.

Then don't give them your personal information

Yeah, you got a downvote there. I don't see a lot of whining, I see folks coming to the general conclusion that this device has a button that is not only useless and previously non-remappable, that the philosophy of putting the button on the device was to get you locked into this Bixby feature many seem to not want, and that disabling it the proper way requires using the application, and giving data to the service that wasn't wanted to start.

I've got 'the action of complaining in a feeble or petulant way' as the definition of whining, and I wouldn't describe the criticisms here as 'feeble' - Bixby was poorly-received out of the gate, and these criticisms seem to continue a lot of the same themes.

What's whiny about 'I don't want to give my information for a function I don't want'? This makes sense to me.

I downvoted for whining about downvotes, fwiw.

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