The Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ have a dedicated Bixby button to fire up the smart assistant, but that key can also be repurposed.
Bixby is among the highlight features of the latest Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ and Samsung even announced the assistant separately, before unveiling the smartphones themselves. Powered by artificial intelligence, Bixby aims to deliver a "fundamentally different" experience compared with other voice assistants currently available on the market.
To further emphasize the importance of Bixby and to make it easier to launch and handle, Samsung equipped the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ with a dedicated Bixby key that allows users to summon the AI assistant with a simple press of a button.
Galaxy S8 Bixby Button Repurposed
Having a dedicated button for a particular application you use a lot can be very helpful, as it saves up time and effort. Samsung created the dedicated Bixby key to emphasize the prowess of its smart assistant, similarly to how Sony equipped some Xperia phones with a hardware shutter button to emphasize the handsets's photography prowess.
For those who are not all that impressed by Bixby, however, or who would simply rather have a dedicated key for something else, a new app now allows users to repurpose the Bixby key to launch another app. If you're not that into Bixby, why waste a perfectly good physical button when you can just remap it and have it serve another purpose?
A new app called All in one Gestures is now available on the Google Play store and it enables Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ users to remap the smartphone's Bixby button to launch something else.
Remapping Dedicated Hardware Buttons
While there are plenty of apps out there that allow users to set gestures and buttons to start various apps and processes, the new All in one Gestures stands out from the crowd because it supports custom hardware keys whereas other apps do not. The Bixby button is not just another standard key on a smartphone; it's a customized quick-access button and other apps can't remap its purpose.
All in one Gestures involves quite an extensive setup and will require users to enable Accessibility Service for the application to work. Once everything is set up, however, users can basically customize the dedicated Bixby key to do pretty much anything. Users could set it to launch Google Now or Google Assistant if they prefer it over Bixby, or assign it to launch some other application altogether.
A number of users have already tried it out and took to Reddit to report that All in one Gestures works well and they've successfully managed to repurpose the Bixby button on the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. The smartphones won't hit the market until April 21, but fans checked them out at carrier shops.
That's not to say that Samsung's Bixby is not good or doesn't work as it should, but it's nonetheless good to know that in case you don't like it, you can remap the Bixby button to serve some other purpose.
To get a better idea of how to remap the Galaxy S8 Bixby button via the All in one Gestures app, check out the video below.
