If you watched any Galaxy S26 coverage before launch, you heard about this. Three AI assistants, one phone — Bixby, Gemini, and Perplexity all coexisting, each ready to jump in on command. It was the feature Samsung kept leading with, and fair enough, it was a genuinely good one.
Except “Hey Plex,” the shorthand wake word for Perplexity, has quietly stopped working for a growing number of users. And the explanation behind it is, somehow, even more chaotic than the bug itself.
Wait, so what actually broke?
Early S26 owners reported “Hey Plex” working fine out of the box, only for it to seemingly vanish after installing a February software update — the same one that introduced the phone’s new inactivity restart mode.
Perplexity still runs on the phone and can be pulled up via the side button, but the wake word is gone — and in some cases, the app didn’t even come preinstalled.
One user shared a screenshot showing Perplexity completely absent from the voice assistant settings menu, as if the whole integration had quietly packed its bags.
Is a rebrand to blame?
Possibly. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas responded to user complaints on X, hinting that the company is ditching “Hey Plex” in favor of “Hey Perplexity.”
Given that there’s already a completely unrelated media app called Plex with its own loyal user base, the rename makes sense. The timing, though, is rough — right at launch, with thousands of new owners mid-setup.
Srinivas then deleted the post (via Android Authority). Samsung also scrubbed the original “Hey Plex” announcement from its newsroom without any correction or follow-up statement. Neither company has officially addressed what’s going on.
So the new wake word might just be “Hey Perplexity” after all, but neither Perplexity nor Samsung has officially confirmed anything just yet.
