GoKawiilTushar Mehta / Android Authority
TL;DR With the latest One UI 9 Beta 7 for the Galaxy S26, Samsung has added Gesture wake-up and home screen widgets, making Bixby easier to activate and use.
Gesture wake-up allows users to trigger Bixby by holding the phone near their mouth and speaking into the mic.
New Bixby widgets include 2×1, 2×2, and 4×2 options that make it easier to input voice or text.
Samsung just released One UI 9 Beta 7 for the Galaxy S26 series earlier in the day. The official changelog was light on details, but we’ve found that the update comes with new features such as My FanCam, Call Brief, Custom Cards in Now Brief, and a split Finder-Google Search search bar. Digging deeper, we’ve found that this release also comes with new Bixby features for the Galaxy S26 series, namely widgets and Gesture wake-up.
Gesture wake-up for Bixby was released alongside the Galaxy Z8 foldables, and it has now made its way to the Galaxy S26 series in this beta release. When enabled, this feature lets you start talking to Bixby by holding your phone close to your mouth and speaking directly into the mic.
As the warning notes, Gesture wake-up is not available when Bixby is already busy with another task. It is also not available during media playback. Gesture wake-up can be found in the Settings menu within the Bixby app, accessed by sliding out the navigation drawer from the left.
Bixby widgets were spotted earlier in the year on One UI 9 test builds, and they have made their way to the Galaxy S26 series now:
Aamir Siddiqui / Android Authority
Bixby now has 2×1, 2×2, and 4×2 widgets, each with a microphone icon and a text input mechanism. The smaller widgets settle for a keyboard icon, while the largest widget has a dedicated input box.
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