Many power users find it annoying that smartphone vendors do not offer built-in options for remapping hardware buttons on their phones, but the open nature of Android allows the enthusiast community with unlimited resources to find workarounds for this problem. While the Galaxy S8 doesn’t have a native option to reconfigure the Bixby Button, you can remap it to trigger any app you want, even without root access. Apparently, you can do the same with the Pixel 2’s Active Edge, although Google doesn’t give you this option ready-made. In that case, let’s take a look at how to remap Active Edge on Pixel 2 to trigger any action or function:
note: We tried this on our non-rooted file Pixel 2 Unit running Android 8.1.0 Oreo beta (OPP5.170921.005) and everything worked as expected. While you haven’t tried it yet Pixel 2XLThe process should be the same on that device as well.
Remap Pixel 2’s Active Edge to Trigger Any Action
- download first Button Mapper (Free) from Play Store. Fire up and tap on ‘Customize’will trigger a popup titled “Allow READ_LOGS”. Tap ‘OK’ to allow.
- Go now Settings > System > About Phone. Scroll down and Tap ‘Build Number’ 7 times in rapid succession Enable ‘Developer Options’ if you haven’t done it yet. As you can see, we had it enabled before, so I got the ‘You are already a developer’ message. If this is your first time doing this, you will get a message saying ‘You are now a developer’.
- You will see a new entry named ‘Developer Options’ Under Settings > System. Tap this, scroll down a bit and Tap on ‘USB Debugging’.
- You may get a popup prompt at this stage, just Tap ‘OK’ to enable USB Debugging.
- Now Connect your Pixel 2 to your PC Connect a standard USB to USB Type-C cable and pull down the Notification Shade from the top. You will get a notification that your phone is charging via USB cable. Tap ‘down arrow’ in the notification to get it (see screenshot below) “Tap for more options” prompt. tap this.
- Now that you have so many options in front of you, Choose ‘File Transfer’. It may also say ‘File Transfer Protocol (FTP)’ or ‘Media Transfer Protocol (FTP)’ depending on how you got to the setting.
- you need now install ADB (Android Debug Bridge) on your PC. download file from Google and extract its contents to a folder of your choice. Now, while holding ‘Shift key on your keyboard, right click with the mouse in the folder containing the uncompressed files and select “Open command window here” (or Command Prompt/PowerShell) as shown in the screenshot below.
- Type now
adb devicesIn the Command Prompt window and press enter. Remember not to close the Command Prompt window because we’re just getting started.
- Inside same Command Prompt window and copy/paste the following code and hit enter:
adb shell sh /data/data/flar2.homebutton/keyevent.sh
- As you can see above, you will get a message saying “Activating button remapping”. The process will take literally a second or two, and once done, Open Button Mapper on your phone and reboot. Now just open “Customize” toggle, and tap on “One touch” option.
- That’s it, folks! As you can see below, you have successfully unlocked dozens of options this can now be triggered by the ‘Active Edge’ on your Pixel 2 so go ahead and take your pick.
SEE ALSO: How to Get AR Stickers of Pixel 2 on Any Android Device
Reconfigure Active Edge to Make Pixel 2 More Useful
Active Edge on the Pixel 2 is a great little feature to have, but since it can only trigger Google Assistant and mute incoming calls, we’ll have to use workarounds like this to make the feature more useful. The method described above may seem a bit complicated at first, but it’s actually ridiculously easy as long as you follow all the steps perfectly. So, if you want to improve the functionality of your Pixel 2’s Active Edge, give it a try and let us know how you reconfigured the feature on your device.
This tutorial was originally published at: XDA Developers. We tried it and it works fine.
