Samsung Blocks Bixby Remapping Apps Again

One of the hardware features of the Samsung Galaxy S8 is the dedicated button that Samsung created to launch Bixby, its new voice assistant software. However given that Bixby was not launched with its complete feature list, we suppose some Galaxy S8 owners feel that the button might be a waste and could be put to better use.

This led to developers creating apps that allowed users to remap the button to do something else other than launch Bixby. Clearly this was not something that Samsung was too happy about and led to them blocking such apps, but developers found a way around it, and it looks like we could be in for a game of cat and mouse because after finding a way around it, Samsung has managed to block these apps again.

In recent update that consists of the June security update to the phone, it seems that Samsung has managed to successfully block such apps from remapping Bixby’s hardware button. This is according to a report from Android Police who claims that a developer for one of these apps told them that his app’s functionality broke as part of the update issued by T-Mobile.

We’re not sure if this affects other Galaxy S8 handsets on other carriers, but for now it seems that only Galaxy S8 handsets on T-Mobile’s network and the ones that received the update via the carrier are affected. However we expect that developers will continue and try and push to get it to work, so it’s only a matter of time.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Apps, bixby, Galaxy S8, Samsung