How To Use Samsung Galaxy S8 Assistant Bixby - Full Tutorial

Bixby is a powerful tool, but not the most intuitive one we've encountered. Here's how to set up and use every feature of Samsung's digital assistant, and what to expect in the future.

Update: We've added a link to the preview page for Bixby Voice users in the U.S.

Samsung's Bixby assistant was supposed to be one of the Galaxy S8's biggest selling points. Bixby, Samsung's take on smartphone assistants like Siri and the Google Assistant, uses artificial intelligence to anticipate your needs and serve up contextualized reminders. It'll edit photos, send messages, and compose emails on command. Eventually, it'll control smart home appliances and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

But right now, Bixby is a bit of a disappointment. Much of its promised functionality is pegged for a late summer release, and third-party app integrations could take even longer. But it's not dead on arrival. It may not be as capable as Google Assistant or Siri, but it has more than a few useful tricks up its sleeve.

Here's how to set up Bixby, and how to get the most out of it.

Getting started with Bixby and Bixby Voice

Accessing Bixby couldn't be easier. The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus feature a dedicated Bixby button on the right side, just below the volume rocker. Tapping on it brings up Bixby Home, the assistant's hub and setup screen.

If you're on the Galaxy S8's home screen, you can access Bixby by swiping to the right.

Enabling Bixby Voice is a bit trickier — for Galaxy S8 owners based in the U.S., it's available in preview. You can sign up by visiting Samsung's website, and once you've enrolled, you'll receive a prompt on your phone to enable Bixby Voice.

When you call up Bixby for the first time, you'll be asked to agree to the terms of service — and to grant it access your data. Hit Agree to all (after reading the terms), and then choose Allow when prompted to grant Bixby permissions.

To access the Settings screen, tap the gear icon in the upper-right-hand corner of Bixby Home, and then hit Settings in the drop-down menu. You'll see options for Bixby Home cards, a list of supported apps, and more.

There's more to Bixby than a single app or screen. Rather, the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus ship with three incarnations of Samsung's Assistant: Bixby Home, Bixby Vision, and Bixby Voice.

Bixby Voice

Bixby Voice, Bixby's third pillar, is like Siri on steroids.

It hasn't launched in earnest, yet, but it's available in beta for select Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus owners in the U.S. You can sign up by visiting Samsung's preview page.

To ensure that the update goes off without a hitch, make sure you're running the latest version of Bixby by heading to the About page from the Bixby Home menu. You might have to clear the data and cache for Bixby apps by opening the Galaxy S8's Settings screen and navigating to the management menu.

Once you've installed the necessary software and completed Samsung's Bixby Voice tutorial, you're free to invoke the voice assistant at your leisure. You can activate it by saying, “Hey Bixby,” or by holding down the Bixby button while you talk.

Right now, Bixby can perform tasks like sending text messages via the Galaxy S8's Mesages app and responding to basic questions about the weather, upcoming meetings, sports scores, and movie showtimes. But that's just the tip of the iceberg — the voice assistant works across apps like the Galaxy S8's dialer, settings menus, camera app, contacts list, and Gallery, and takes on most multi-step tasks you dictate to it.

Bixby can handle complicated tasks like opening an app in split-screen view, rotating misaligned photos, reminding you where you parked, playing videos on a nearby TV, and composing emails. It can gather all the photos you took last week into a new album labeled “Vacation” and share it with your friends, or take a selfie and text it to someone. And it can perform two-step actions like, “Open Uber and rate my driver 5 stars,” and, “Open Instagram and post my most recent photo.”

“Instead of taking multiple steps to make a call — turning on and unblocking the phone, looking for the phone application, clicking on the contact bar to search for the person that you're trying to call, and pressing the phone icon to start dialing — you will be able to do all of these steps with one push of the Bixby button,” Injong Rhee, Samsung's executive vice president, told Digital Trends.

Bixby Voice is customizable, too — it'll lower the volume when you hold the Galaxy S8 to your ear, and change the gender of the assistant on the fly. And it supports shortcuts — you can shorten the lengthy commands you use most often to a single word or phrase, if you so choose.

Samsung says Bixby supports more than 3,000 commands, including app-specific commands in Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Uber, Gmail, Google Maps, and more. And it says that more will come when it exits beta later this year.

Bixby Home

Samsung calls Bixby Home a “social stream for your device,” and that's more or less accurate. It's a unified card-like interface of reminders, contextually relevant information, and social media updates — sort of like a cross between Google Now and HTC's BlinkFeed.

Bixby Home can be customized to a degree. You can dismiss, pin, or permanently hide cards by tapping the gear icon in the upper-right corner of an individual Bixby Home tab.

Samsung's default apps supply most of Bixby Home's content. You'll see a local weather forecast, activity stats from Samsung's Health app, and local files in the Galaxy S8's Music app.

But the list of third-party services that support Bixby Home is growing, albeit slowly. A Spotify card provides one-tap access to your playlists and music. CNN and Flipboard show trending news stories from around the web. Facebook, Foursquare, and Twitter show the latest updates from your social circles. And soon, Uber will show your recent rides.

Eventually, Samsung says Bixby Home will be able to learn from your routine and update to reflect how you use your phone throughout the day. A future iteration will serve up buttons that'll control smart light bulbs and door locks, shortcuts to the apps you use most frequently, and more — all based on the time of day, your location, and other factors.

Bixby Vision

Bixby Vision taps machine learning (and Pinterest's Lens Tool) to identify the objects around it. Much like Google Goggles or Amazon's Flow, Bixby Vision tries to suss out whatever's in front of the Galaxy S8's camera, and serve up information depending on what it finds.

You launch it by tapping the Bixby button in the Galaxy S8's camera app, Bixby Home, or the Gallery app.

Right now, Bixby Vision recognizes four categories of objects: Place, Text, Image, and Shopping.

Bixby Vision is surprisingly capable, if a little finicky. It'll identify landmarks like the Empire State building and suggest nearby places of interest, for example. If you point at a bag of Twizzlers, it'll recommend similar candy from one of the supported online stores. If you point it at a bottle of wine, it'll offer details on the label. It'll automatically parse QR codes and barcodes, books, and logos, and you can use it to translate text.

It'll only get better with time. Samsung says it's working with partners including Amazon, Vivino, Pinterest, and others to improve the relevancy of Bixby Vision's search results.

Reminders

Bixby's Reminders is a little more robust than the reminders you can create with Siri or the Google Assistant. It's built into the Galaxy S8's native apps, and lets you attach media like videos, websites, photos, messages.

You can set a specific time you'd like to see a reminder, or even a specific location. When the conditions are met, said reminder will appear in the form of a notification you can dismiss, snooze, or check off.

Bixby beyond

Eventually, Samsung expects Bixby to make its way into other platforms.

Samsung sees Bixby in television remote controls, smart refrigerators, and even washing machines. It plans to make the assistant compatible with future Samsung Connect smart home product lines, and it's working on bringing Bixby to its Gear line of smartwatches.

It'll probably be some time before Bixby escapes the confines of the Galaxy S8, but rest assured Samsung is hard at work on its expansion.