Bixby 2.0 debug menu hints at German, French, Italian, Spanish & more

XDA

[Update: Live] Bixby 2.0 debug menu hints at German, French, Italian, & Spanish language support

By Max Weinbach

Published Feb 20, 2019

Samsung is testing support for German, French, Italian, and Spanish languages in Bixby 2.0. We found this by enabling a hidden debug menu.

Update 2/20/19: The new languages are rolling out now to Bixby users. We're not sure if this is a server-side switch or full app update. Screenshot below.

Samsung's Bixby was just updated with the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note 9. Bixby 2.0 was launched with few user-facing updates besides a new UI and some new integrations. There were a lot of back-end updates that were included in Bixby 2.0, though, including Viv and a new framework. This new framework includes a few new languages that will be supported soon. SamMobile reported earlier that Samsung will soon add support for German. We were able to confirm that German language support is in the works along with a few other languages.

We were able to get access to a hidden debug menu inside of Bixby 2.0. Here, we were able to find a list of languages that are being tested for future support. These languages include German, French, Italian, and Spanish. These are some of the most popular languages spoken around the world. Samsung is trying to make Bixby more widely available to more users. We were able to find this menu by cloning the Bixby app and installing it on the Samsung Galaxy S9+ and then opening the debug menu. We were also able to confirm this on the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 but didn't have any screenshots at the time.

These languages won't be supported in Bixby 2.0 for a while. Samsung adds recordings for the Bixby Voice setup into the app. We decompiled the app and found a copy of voice setup recordings in English, Korean, and Mandarin. Samsung added copies of the recordings for Mandarin before it was officially announced. We can assume Samsung will do the same for these new languages and so we should be able to get an idea of when it will launch in the near future.

Currently, Bixby only supports English, Mandarin, and Korean. These languages are very widely used but still leaves out lots of users. The new languages that will be added and supported soon will accommodate a lot of new users and provide Samsung with larger datasets to improve Bixby 2.0. Samsung could sure use anything to improve it, especially considering how aggressively Google has been pushing Assistant in new areas.

Update: Live

The new languages are showing up in Bixby right now. As mentioned, we're not sure if this was a server-side switch or full update. Bixby did receive an update a couple of days ago. Regardless, users who see the languages are on Bixby version 2.0.52.14. The screenshot below is from a user in the SamCentral Discord server.