Samsung Bixby update adds new features for US customers

Bixby, Samsung’s virtual assistant, has gone a long way since it was launched five years ago to replace the rather poorly designed S Voice assistant. Thanks to timely and meaningful updates more and more Samsung fans are starting to use Bixby in their everyday lives.

These days Samsung is rolling out another Bixby update specifically designed to improve the user experience for children accounts. When children with Bixby accounts use Samsung’s voice assistant and required additional third-party sharing permissions, they will now be able to request verification of their parental consent.

Currently, this feature is only available in Korea and the United States, but Samsung confirmed that more countries will be added gradually, so anyone with a Samsung phone should get it in the coming weeks.

But this isn’t the only new feature included in the update. According to the changelog spotted by SamMobile, the update introduces the ability to activate voice wake-up when a ringtone, alarm, or Bixby TTS is playing, even without the “Wake up when sound is playing” option.

Users who want voice wake-up to activate when playing music can turn on the “Wake up when media is playing” option in the Bixby settings under Voice wake-up.

Finally, a third new feature added to Bixby in the latest update enables the voice assistant to recommend useful settings related to a wider range of commands. Simply talk to Bixby to start getting these recommendations.

The changelog also mentions that functional improvements and bug fixes have been added too, but no other details are provided. This is a pretty small update that weighs in at around 60MB, at least in Korea and the US where it includes an additional feature.