Who would need to press the power button to actually turn off or restart the device, right?
The setting to change this is also pretty much buried under Settings -> Special Features -> Gestures.
(Yes, I have no idea why the Assistant is in German when the phone is set to English either 🫠)
It was annoying having to change that setting so I could shut down the phone and install GrapheneOS.
Another in a long line of messing with user interface things on updates, without any prior warning to the user. And if you even get a changelog at all on the update prompt it’s always just vague bullshit like, “Bug fixes and usability improvements,” without explaining what those “improvements” are supposed to be.
In unrelated news, the last major update on my Moto G changed the incoming call screen from swipe up to answer, swipe down to reject to swipe left to answer, swipe right to reject. What is this, fucking Tinder now? And don’t come at me about the “gesture” setting in the dialer app options, either. Yes, I am aware of it. The only options listed there are now “horizontal swipe” and “single tap to answer.” Why any rational individual would want to inflict the hell that is the latter option on themselves is unknown to me.
This kind of horseshit is why boomers and old people are terrified of updates and drive us IT nerds up the wall by perpetually ignoring and dismissing them. Because when you change the user interface choices people are used to behind their backs and without warning, as far as they’re concerned you just broke their device.
Cut it out.
The best explanation I saw several years ago: Large tech companies drive change through competing individual teams and projects. So some manager pitched a half-assed idea, somehow convinced upper management to go with it, got developers to heroically implement it, and might have gotten some bonus for doing so. It doesn’t matter if there was no value as long as some decision maker thinks there is (or does not care, or numbers were fudged anyway).
It is literally change for the sake of change.
Android is getting really terrible in general, whoever they have designing the UI is not good at their jobs. The thing I hate the most is now you have to open the side menu to open your contacts in the contacts app. It’s so annoying. Add several seconds to every instance of making a call.
That dialer change was evil. I have switched to Fossify Phone now and use that as a dialer. The Fossify apps are amazing, they also have a gallery and messages app, so Google’s proprietary BS isn’t neccessary.
Samsung just improved my user experience by removing “silent” from the available options when pressing the volume down button for notifications/ringer — now I need to open a menu to press a touchscreen button a couple times, instead of being able to quickly set my phone to silent through tactile feel without looking.
thank you so much for improving my user experience for me, Samsung, this is really what I’ve been missing for the past decade
i really liked that swipe up to answer too
Last update changed the phone buttons around for no reason I can discern. Not sure that’s ever happened because I was shocked, never had to relearn the buttons.
I noticed that and also noticed how they swapped out the assistant for for Gemini AI bullshit that doesn’t work right so you can’t tell it to turn on a light or generally to do anything and have it actually do it correctly.
Every time my phone gets an update I have to go and switch that shit back. I honestly believe they’re trying to get me to buy a Linux phone.
you can change it
My post literally says so :D It’s still a dickhead move to put the assistant in there as the default when setting up the device and hiding the option under “Gestures”.
It’s all fuckin stupid shit but I love that it’s in German. That’s the icing on the cake.
Came default on pixel for me. Also can’t remove or move the Google search bar.
aahh, but GrapheneOS
That’s been around for a while sadly, you need an alternative launcher. I’m grandfathered into Nova but most people are moving towards Lawnchair, I think.
I use Lawnchair for that.
There’s a PC program called Android Debloat, gives you a list of apps on your Android with comprehensive information about what they do, and you can blitz the shit off your phone. Tip 1: Always install a keyboard before removing Gboard. Tip 2: Removing the Google app that forces the search widget also removes Gemini usability, the news sidebar, and others. I know - what a loss
Give ADBAppControl a try. It’s like a GUI for adb debloating and then a bit.
I go to F-Droid to check this out and before I even search I have another useful tool -
Not just new installations. It also happened on my phone when Android was updated. Thanks OP for also posting where to fix this!
Not just new ones. Last month my mom asked for help because she could no longer turn off her phone. I checked the settings and the power button had been assigned to the assistant.
Going full in on the anticompetitive bullshit now? But why? Does Google have a deal with the orange Nazi against EU or what?
why the Assistant is in German when the phone is set to English
Because Google just has no idea how to deal with multilingual people. Google Assistant’s ability to understand and respond to prompts that are in either of my languages is completely unpredictable, even for the language the UI is displaying in. Another issue is that you apparently just cannot in any way control what language call screen will use to talk to a caller. Such a good feature rendered entirely useless for me because of that.
I’ve changed it to launch Firefox and double press to turn on/off flashlight. I have a Samsung phone
How do you turn off your phone then?
On Samsung phones, you can turn off your phone via the notification bar drop down.
That being said, I still prefer to have my power button bound to…well…power options lol.
Yeah I remember rebinding my grandparents butrons on samaung phones back to power. Fucking updates changed it to the stupid assistant and they had no idea how to turn off their phone.
I don’t use the features you listed that much, so I switched it back to powering off my phone. On my Samsung device, there was a link titled how do I turn off my phone. One of the options suggested was saying, “Bixby, turn off my phone.” Nope.
At the top of the quick settings panel there is a power button.
On my S25U you just hold down the down volume button and the power button at the same time. That’s how it came for me stick our of the box, have not touched it. I did set my power button to be one long press for my wallet app instead of Gemini tho
Does that actually bring up a menu, or just outright shut it down?
The two button shortcut has historically been for forcing an immediate shutdown in the event of like, a full system freeze. It’s the same as ripping the power cord from a running desktop PC, and isn’t the intended graceful shutdown that these devices are supposed to get.
Unless they’ve changed things, that’s been the standard since the first smart phones and PDAs.
For me it brings up this menu
I don’t know what everyone’s on about. I’m pretty sure this is explained in the first launch tutorial. You press power and volume up at the same time.
I don’t remember the first launch tutorial because 2 reasons.
- It was 2 years ago.
- I know how to use a fucking phone. The cunts changing a function that literally every phone up to that point had implemented the same way is not my damn fault.
If only they could break the bastard Bixby button instead.
I loved how at first, I was able to rebind that stupid button to anything I wanted. Then that stopped and it became only Bixby. Horrible decision - Having a button that can launch any app you want is a beautiful thing that more phones need to get behind.
Current gen of samsung phones has removed it entirely, fwiw.
Which is a loss. I liked the extra button, just not for an assistant.
Technically it opens your default assistant. Mine is set to Dicio, so it opens that. Also, it wasn’t default for me, but just an option I found while exploring settings.
It seems like they haven’t changed the setting retroactively for existing users, but I just reset my Nothing Phone 1 to factory settings and then it got set by default.
I just got a OneUI update to V7 on my Samsung and it remapped the power button.
Same. On my stock Pixel it defaulted to hold the power button for assist. Which I immediately disabled and never looked back.
This was coupled with the power menu being added as a button to the notification shade.
I imagine it was in response to Apple when they switched to having the Siri button.
On the Nothing Phones is it just a press?
You should install GrapheneOS and never have to fuck with Gemini again…
I want to. Literally the only thing stopping me is !147
Don’t use your personal device for work. I refuse to do that because my time off is mine. There’s no reason for work to be invading my personal life.
Google and languages is its own clusterfuck anyway. To this day, I don’t think it properly supports using multiple languages.
First, English YouTube titles were (often badly) auto-translated to German and I found no other option to disable it but to set my entire profile’s first language to English. Then it began translating German stuff into English instead.
Is it so hart to implement an option to say “I speak both English and German perfectly well, please stop trying to accommodate some primary language”?
Bonus: Technical terms being translated one way or the other, usually without awareness of the technical, semantic context that would require a specific translation (or none at all).
Anyway, that’s tangential.
I agree, the forced auto-translation is really annoying. There’s a browser extension called “YouTube No Translation” that fetches the original titles and descriptions from the YouTube API and replaces them.
It’s ridiculous, I already need three extensions to make YouTube useable again. YouTube Row Fixer, YouTube No Translation and YouTube Enhancer. And it’s still garbage in some places.
Plus SponsorBlock, but that’s not a Google issue. I just can’t stand hearing people say “without further ado” before “but first”. Also, skipping the extra bit at the end of music videos where you get treated to five-second-bits of other songs you didn’t ask for.
I currently don’t have the patience and spare energy to degoogle, but I admire anyone who does.
I turn off my phone every night, so I changed that back as soon as I found out.
They also messed with the navigation bar… Before, instead of having three buttons, you could have it display three lines at the bottom that you used by swiping upward. They did away with that, so now your only options are 1) the three regular buttons that are too easy to accidentally press and take up too much screen real estate, or 2) one line that is harder to use combined with a back functionality enabled by swiping from the left ir right sides of the screen. It’s not only slower to use than the three lines, but it also results in accidentally going back when trying to scroll horizontally.
They could have left an option to keep the three lines, but no, they love reminding us we don’t really own the devices we pay for >:|
If Samsung, install Good Lock and use the Navstar plugin to bring the functionality back.
That’s what I did.
Thank you, I will definitely check those out.
It also seems I can root my phone, but I’d rather not go that route until absolutely necessary (e.g. some future update that breaks side loading).
This is so cool. You showed me a whole new world
It just asked me what it should do when I press the power button. Pretty painless, 🤷. End of the day it’s just another win for GrapheneOS though.
