When it comes to Voice Assistants, Bixby is yet to compare to the likes of Alexa and Google Assistant. Some people love the Bixby assistant and find that it works great for them.
But others aren’t too happy with the overall responsiveness and would rather turn off the feature altogether. However, this process isn’t completely clear or straightforward. In this article, we’ll show you how to disable Bixby on your Samsung TV.
Disabling Bixby on Samsung TV
Bixby lets you access all kinds of features on your Samsung TV. All you need is your voice. Call Bixby by its name and ask it to lower the volume or tell you what the weather’s like in Tokyo.
But when Bixby doesn’t hear your commands properly, or other miscommunications occur, it can get a bit frustrating. To turn off the Bixby on your TV, here’s what you need to do:
- On your Samsung remote, press the Home button.
- Use your left key to find the “Settings” option.
- Scroll down and select “General”.
- Now select “Bixby Voice Settings”.
- Then select the “Voice wake-up” option.
- Bixby will be set to “On”. Use your remote to highlight “Off” and press OK on your remote.
After you exit settings, be sure to confirm that the Bixby feature is really disabled. Just say “Hey Bixby”, and if the TV doesn’t wake up and wait for an additional command, that means you’ve successfully turned it off.
You should try several times, in a progressively louder tone of voice. One of the problems some users have with Bixby is the inconsistency with which it responds to the volume of their voice.
Bixby Wake-Up Sensitivity
Are you’re quitting Bixby because it reacted to your voice even when you weren’t talking to it? Not to worry, there’s something you can do about that.
You can change Bixby’s Wake-up sensitivity. Follow the same steps as above to get to the “Voice Wake-up” settings. Once you’re there, leave the Bixby feature to “On” and move to the voice sensitivity section.
You can choose to have the Wake-up sensitivity to Low, Medium, or High. Make sure that you choose either Low or Medium if you don’t want Bixby to wake up and start talking to you out of nowhere.
And if you simply don’t like the voice that’s talking to you, you can pick another one. Bixby is automatically set to “John” a male voice. But there are four different voices in total. There are “Julia”, “Lisa”, and “Stephanie”, too.
Turning Off the Voice Guide
Even when the Voice Assistant feature is off, there’s still a way your Samsung TV might start talking to you. You might have somehow turned on the Voice Guide feature that was designed to help visually impaired users.
The Voice Guide offers a narration that helps them navigate their Samsung TV. But if you don’t need this accessibility feature on, you can easily turn it off. Here’s how you do it:
- On your Samsung remote, press the Home button.
- Scroll to the very left and select “Settings”.
- Select “General” and then select “Accessibility”.
- On top of the menu, you’ll see “Voice Guide Settings”. Turn off the button next to it. It will go from green to grey.
That’s it – you’ve successfully turned off the Voice Guide. You can follow the same steps if you need to turn it back on again.
But if you’re not sure if you want to disable this feature, but you’re a bit annoyed with it at the same time, you can customize it. In the same settings, you can leave the Voice Guide to On and then change the volume, speed, and pitch of the Guide.
Talk to Your Samsung TV When You Want to
And when you don’t want to talk to it, you really don’t have to. Bixby Voice Assistant can be a fun and useful feature to have.
But if you’re wasting too much energy waking it up, it might not seem worth it. Also, if it’s waking up and speaking to you when you weren’t expecting it, that could get creepy fast. So, if you’re thinking about simply turning it off for a while, now you know exactly how to do it.
Do you use Bixby Voice Assistant on your Samsung TV? Let us know in the comments below.