'Hey Plex’ will be replaced by 'Hey Perplexity’ on your Galaxy S26

Samsung baked the Perplexity AI assistant into the Galaxy S26 series. You could bring up the assistant with the “Hey Plex” hot word, but we found that the Galaxy S26's first update took this capability away.

It appears that the change has been made by Perplexity itself as it's changing the hot word from “Hey Plex” to “Hey Perplexity.”

The first Galaxy S26 update had removed the “Hey Plex detection” option from the Perplexity app. This meant that users could only bring up two assistants with voice commands instead of three, the other two being Bixby and Gemini.

As AndroidAuthority highlights, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas had previously posted on X that the company was shifting to a new hot word which would be “Hey Perplexity.” They've now dug into the new version 2.81.2 of the Perplexity app for Android and found screenshots that back up this transition.

The app doesn't use these screens publicly right now but since they've been built into it, it's only a matter of time before they're made live. They make it very clear that “Hey Perplexity” will be the new wake word going forward.

It's unclear why the company would want to change its previous hot word. One theory is that it might want to avoid any confusion with the Plex media streaming service, so it may want to use the full “Perplexity” brand in the hot word.

The company hasn't said when this switch would be live in the app but seeing as how the groundwork has already been laid, it may be sooner rather than later.