Bixby Routines are among the most useful features that come preloaded on a Samsung phone, allowing us to automate dozens of system functions to make our lives easier. But despite being so good, many people ignore them because of the name. The Bixby assistant has a poor reputation as one of the worst voice assistants available, and that’s with good reason. But it’s a shame that this reputation might be stopping Bixby Routines from getting the attention they deserve. I aim to rectify that by showing off what this app can do and why you should be using it.
Creating a routine
Before we look at my favorite routines, we should talk about how to create one of our own. The Bixby Routines app won’t appear in your app drawer by default, so we’ll start there.
- Open the Settings app and navigate to Advanced features
- Scroll down to Bixby Routines and enable the toggle
- Tap Bixby Routines to open the app and tap on the menu button in the top right that looks like three vertical dots
- Press Settings and then toggle on Show Bixby Routines on the apps screen
Now that Bixby Routines has been enabled and is easily accessible from the app drawer, we can start to create routines.
- Open Bixby Routines
- Tap Add routine in the bottom bar
- Choose a trigger that will start the routine by pressing the plus (+) in the If section
- Choose what you want to trigger the routine from the list of options
- You can repeat steps 3 and 4 if you would like more than one trigger
- Now press the plus (+) in the Then section
- Find the action you want the routine to perform when activated
- Repeat steps 5 and 6 if you want the routine to perform more than one action
- Press Next in the bottom right when ready and then name your routine and choose an icon
- If your routine is triggered manually, you’ll be prompted to add a widget to your home screen. Press Add to do so.
There are a lot of different triggers and actions that can be performed, and there isn’t enough time to go over all of them. My advice is to look through each category and see what you’ll want to use. If you’re looking for something specific, there’s a helpful search bar, so don’t worry about remembering exactly where everything is. If your routine has to be activated manually, you can do that from the app or by using the home screen widget it’ll prompt you to use.
Now that we know how to make a routine, let’s see why the app is so useful and what kind of routines we can use.
Integration with Galaxy Buds and Galaxy Watch
If you use multiple Samsung devices like Galaxy Buds or a Galaxy Watch, you can use Routines to make them all work together even more seamlessly.
Galaxy Buds
Let’s say you commute to work every morning from 07:00 to 07:45, and you use Spotify to listen to music on your Galaxy Buds and Google Maps to keep track of when your next stop is. As you’ll see in the image above, a Bixby Routine can be triggered if you connect your Galaxy Buds Pro during your commute, which will enable active noise cancellation on your buds, make them read out your notifications, and make Spotify and Google Maps your lock screen shortcuts.
That’s not all routines can do on your Galaxy Buds. They can also change your audio equalizer, toggle gaming mode, block earbud touch controls, toggle voice detection, enable Bixby wake-up, and change what your touch controls are. Naturally, the availability of some of these will change based on which Galaxy Buds you own.
Galaxy Watch
If you have a Galaxy Watch, you can use its theater mode as a trigger. In the screenshot below, you’ll see that when I go to the cinema and enable theater mode on my Watch4, the routine will mute all sounds on my phone, enable do not disturb, and switch off my always-on display. When I turn theater mode off, the app will reverse all of those settings to what they were before it was triggered. This is one of my favorite routines as I frequently forget to mute my phone at the cinema, but always remember to use theater mode to prevent my watch from glowing through the film.
You can also change watch faces with Bixby Routines, which comes in handy when going to the gym. When I start my gym routine, my Watch4 will change its face to something more fitness-focused, with shortcuts to start workout tracking only a tap away. Once I’m ready to go home, the routine ends, and my watch goes back to the way it was.
System controls
If you don’t have other Samsung devices, Bixby Routines is still worth checking out due to the number of system settings the app can control. To demonstrate this, let’s take a look at three of my most used routines.
I created the charging speed routine to mimic adaptive charging on Pixel phones. Between 23:30 and 07:00, all fast charging — wired and wireless — is switched off. This way, my phone will charge slowly on my wireless charger while I sleep and then quickly top things off before I wake up. It’s not as flexible as Google’s implementation, which alters the timings based on your next alarm, but it’s better than nothing.
For some reason, One UI still doesn’t have an automatic power-saving mode that kicks in below a certain battery percentage. Thankfully this is quickly done with a routine. When my phone hits 35%, power-saving mode is enabled. I also have the routine change my screen timeout 15 seconds, so my screen won’t stay on as long when unattended.
Finally, we have my migraine routine, which is activated via a widget on my home screen. When enabled, it switches on the blue light filter to reduce eye strain, mutes all audio, and switches my phone to do not disturb. Now that we have an extra dim mode in Android 12, I’m hoping the app gets updated to support it, as that would be a perfect addition for this use case.
I appreciate that this routine is specific to my situation and isn’t something everyone would use, but that’s the reason I included it. Most of us have at least one obscure use case for our phones that few others would care about, and Bixby Routines can cater to many of them.
As flexible as the app already is, it seems Samsung still has plans for it. Last year Samsung released the Routine + Good Lock module, which allows you to create touch macros, use S Pen gestures as arrow keys in your browser, and change what happens when you double-press your power button. I hope to see Samsung experiment even more with this module as time goes on.
Bixby Routines is one of the best apps in One UI. It offers incredible flexibility while remaining easy to set up and use. I think it’s a shame that more people aren’t aware of it or are put off of using it just because Bixby is in the name. If you have a Samsung phone and haven’t used it yet, give it a go. You might be surprised by how useful it is.
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