
How to Remove Bixby from Samsung Phones - rolph
https://www.darpandodiya.com/code/guide-remove-bixby-bloatware-from-samsung-galaxy-phones/
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zmmmmm
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.

~~~
judge2020
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.

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

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

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dow_jones
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! :)

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate

       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!

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

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ridaj
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.

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propogandist
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.

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mevile
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.

~~~
jimmaswell
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.

~~~
DennisAleynikov
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

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

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
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.

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King-Aaron
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.

~~~
ayoisaiah
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?

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krageon
> 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.

~~~
vinay427
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."

~~~
krageon
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!

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Simulacra
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

~~~
jimmaswell
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.

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MiddleEndian
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.

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whymauri
It's a remapable button.

~~~
MiddleEndian
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.

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Rebelgecko
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

~~~
DennisAleynikov
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.

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alister
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...](https://www.phonearena.com/image.php?m=Articles.Images&f=name&id=318387&popup=1)

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

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steve19
If you disable can the bixby button be remapped (without any of those apps
that require crazy deep permissions)?

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product50
Yes - you can do it now [https://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-remap-bixby-
button-9...](https://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-remap-bixby-
button-975962/)

~~~
hbcondo714
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.

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Mindwipe
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.

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

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DennisAleynikov
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.

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Trias11
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?

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tootie
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.

~~~
_coveredInBees
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.

~~~
raxxorrax
> 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.

~~~
_coveredInBees
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.

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ayoisaiah
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.

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CalRobert
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.

~~~
h4waii
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.

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jxramos
Will this technique work for any bloatware found on Android?

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

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

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rolph
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.

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dejaime
@gif thank you

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Yizahi
1\. Enjoys "cancer free device"

2\. Has Google Assistant and other Google bloatware installed

....

Okay

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

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

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jrockway
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.

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pedrocx486
At the risk of being downvoted I can't overlook how whiny some people in this
thread are.

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majewsky
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.

~~~
dexterdog
Then don't give them your personal information

