Ever since Samsung announced the Galaxy S8 with its onboard assistant, Bixby, people have been asking for ways to disable it and forget the button ever existed in the first place. With the Galaxy S9 and Note 9, that chorus became even louder, and with the Galaxy S10 now available, a whole new generation of customers will be looking to disable Bixby.
One of the biggest frustrations with the Bixby button is its placement; the button is right under the volume keys and nearly directly opposite the power buttons. On larger phones like the Galaxy S9+ and Note 8, this often leads to accidental presses and unintended Bixby launches, especially when double-pressing the power button to launch the camera.
The Bixby button is also not mappable to another action; Samsung wants you to use it for Bixby, or not at all. This isn't ideal, so many people will inevitably choose to just forget it exists and move on.
While the hardware button's not going anywhere, we can definitely do something about the software. Here's how to get rid of as much of Bixby as possible.
- Install the USB drivers for your device (Google has a list of some universal USB drivers here)
- Download the ADB binary for your particular OS (Windows, Mac, Linux)
- Extract the zip file into a folder that you can quickly access.
- On your phone, go to Settings and tap on About Phone. Find the Build Number and tap on it 7 times to enable Developer Options.
- Now enter Developer Options and find USB Debugging. Enable it.
- Plug your phone into the computer and change it from "charge only" mode to "file transfer (MTP)" mode.
- On your computer, browse to the directory where you extracted the ADB binary.
- Launch a Command Prompt in your ADB folder. For Windows users, this can be done by holding Shift and Right-clicking then selecting the “open command prompt here” option.
- Once you’re in the command prompt/terminal, enter the following command: adb devices
- You will see that the system is starting the ADB daemon. If this is your first time running ADB, you will see a prompt on your phone asking you to authorize a connection with the computer. Grant it.
- Now if you re-run the adb devices command, the terminal will print the serial number of your device. If so, then you’re ready to move on.
- Enter the following command:
adb shell
- Execute this command to find package names.package list:
pm list packages | grep 'bixby'
You will get a list like this:
package:com.samsung.android.app.settings.bixby
package:com.samsung.systemui.bixby2
package:com.samsung.android.bixby.service
package:com.samsung.android.bixby.agent
package:com.samsung.android.bixbyvision.framework
package:com.samsung.android.bixby.wakeup
package:com.samsung.android.bixby.plmsync
package:com.samsung.android.bixby.agent.dummy- Execute a command to disable a specific system application:
pm disable -k --user 0 <name of package>to uninstall
pm uninstall -k --user 0 <name of package>For example, we can remove the first package com.samsung.android.app.settings.bixby with following command:
pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.samsung.android.app.settings.bixby
If the uninstall was succesful you will get this message.
Success
As a word of warning, uninstalling system applications can be dangerous so please know what you’re getting rid of before you complete these steps. Failing to do so could result in your phone becoming unusable until you perform a factory reset. Of course, by removing any given system application, another system application that may depend on it may also break so be careful what you remove. But if something does go wrong, you can always perform a factory reset to bring things back to the way they were. However, there’s an even easier way to bring back an app you uninstalled, here’s how:
Open a command prompt or terminal window, and enter the following command:
cmd package install-existing <name of package>For example, we can restore the first package com.samsung.android.app.settings.bixby with following command:
cmd package install-existing com.samsung.android.app.settings.bixby
This works because applications truly aren’t being fully uninstalled from the device, they are just being uninstalled for the current user (user 0 is the default/main user of the phone). That’s why, if you omit the “–user 0” and “-k” part of the uninstall command, the command won’t work.
These two flags respectively specify that the system app will only be uninstalled for the current user (and not all users, which is something that requires root access) and that the cache/data of the system application will be preserved (which can’t be removed without root access). Therefore, even if you uninstall a system application using this method, you can still receive official OTA updates from your carrier or OEM.
Using this method, yopu will be able to disable bixby button but also you will get rid of another annoying applications like the Huawei HiVoice application that came pre-installed on his Chinese Honor Note 8 smartphone, thus allowing him to instead default to Google Assistant when long-pressing the home button. Other users have been reporting that this method allowed them to uninstall the application responsible for serving advertisements on their Amazon Prime exclusive Moto G smartphones.
This guide has been shown to work on a number of devices like the LG G6, Google Pixel, Galaxy S8 and many more. Try it out on your device and let us know how it goes in the comments below!