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A few weeks ago, it was discovered that traditional hardware button remapper applications made it possible to change the dedicated Bixby button on the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ to anything else. Naturally, many wanted the ability to change this button to launch Google Assistant or even Google Now. We covered this tip and wrote up a guide on how to remap the button to Google Assistant, but sadly this didn’t work for very long.
Not even two weeks later, Samsung started rolling out an OTA update that disabled this feature. The new update did exactly that by preventing Accessibility Services from intercepting this key event since this is how those regular remapping applications work. This change was confirmed by a Samsung representative via Twitter, and it caused a number of community developers here at XDA to start hunting for alternative ways to remap the hardware button.
So we wanted to highlight a few of those here today with the first one coming from XDA Recognized Developer . Their application is called BixBye, and it allows you to remap the button to a voice assistant, to launch an application, to open up the notification drawer, bring up the power menu, open the recents or take you to the home screen. Most of these remapping applications will actually just kill the Bixby service after it launches and then launch the one you want it to — However, the developer of BixBye says their application does not do this.
Next up is an application from XDA Senior Member called Bixby Remapper. This one lets you use the Bixby button to launch your camera, launch a specific app (like Google Now), play/pause music, toggle your flashlight and more. Lastly we have an application from XDA Member called Custom Bixby Button. It works similarly to Bixby Remapper and will only trigger when it detects the Bixby app comes to the foreground.
