Galaxy S26’s first update appears to remove ‘Hey Plex’ feature

Samsung’s latest lineup of non-foldable flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S26 series, brings several upgrades over its predecessor, the Galaxy S25 lineup. One of them was the ability to summon the Perplexity assistant by saying, “Hey Plex.” Surprisingly, the brand appears to have removed this feature with the first software update.

When we received our Galaxy S26 Ultra, one of the new features we discovered on it over the Galaxy S25 Ultra was that the Perplexity app offered the ‘Hey Plex detection’ option. Once enabled and set up, when you say “Hey Plex,” the phoen brought up the Perplexity assistant on the screen. You can check out its screenshots below.

However, after installing the phone’s first software update — which Samsung released on Monday — we found that the Perplexity app no longer offers the ‘Hey Plex detection’ option, as shown in the screenshot below. As a result, saying “Hey Plex” no longer brings up the Perplexity assistant on the phone’s screen. With the latest change, you can now bring up only two assistants on the screen instead of three, Bixby and Gemini, by saying H Bixby and Hey Gemini, respectively.

It’s also possible that Perplexity removed the feature through an update to the app. However, we don’t recall updating the app before the ‘Hey Plex detection‘ option disappeared. Considering that, it seems likely that the feature was removed with the phone’s first software update. At the moment, there’s no information on why Samsung or Perplexity may have removed it. We will reach out to Samsung and get back to you with its answer.