This comparison changed in April 2026, when a notice appeared inside Samsung Notes: after July, syncing with OneNote would no longer be supported.
Worth being precise about the evidence, because both companies have been quiet. The notice is in the app. There has been no formal press release from Samsung or Microsoft, and no stated reason. The partnership dates to 2020.
If you rely on that bridge, verify the current state on your own device before making decisions. What follows assumes it goes as the notice says.
What actually breaks
Less than the headlines imply, because the integration was never as deep as people assume.
It was one-way. Samsung Notes pushed copies into OneNote. You could not edit a note in OneNote and see the change in Samsung Notes. It was a mirror, not a sync, and anyone who treated it as two-way was already losing edits.
From August, that mirror stops. Notes already copied into OneNote stay there. New ones do not arrive.
The people this hurts are the ones with a Galaxy tablet and a Windows PC who wrote by hand on the tablet and read on the desktop. That workflow now needs a decision.
The two apps, honestly
They are not competitors so much as apps that overlap awkwardly.
| Samsung Notes | OneNote | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | Galaxy devices only | Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, web |
| Handwriting | Excellent, lowest S Pen latency | Good, weaker palm rejection |
| Structure | Folders and notes | Notebooks, sections, pages |
| Canvas | Page-based | Infinite, free placement |
| Search of handwriting | Yes | Yes |
| Price | Free, preinstalled | Free, more with Microsoft 365 |
| Sync | Samsung Cloud | OneDrive |
| Export | PDF, image, some text | PDF, .one, OneNote package |
Samsung Notes is the better writing surface on a Galaxy device. Lower pen latency, faster to open, better integration with the S Pen's own gestures and with screen-off memo. If the thing you value is that writing feels immediate, it wins on hardware Samsung controls.
OneNote is the better system. It runs everywhere, it survives you changing phone brands, the notebook and section structure scales past a few hundred notes, and it is a genuine long-term home. Its handwriting is good rather than exceptional.
What to do
If you are all-Galaxy, stay in Samsung Notes. The sync ending changes nothing for you. Set up Samsung Cloud backup and check it is actually running, because a single-vendor, single-ecosystem app with no external copy is exactly the situation that goes badly. See how to back up your notes.
If you have a Windows PC, move to OneNote. This is the case the shutdown breaks, and there is no clean replacement bridge. Writing directly in OneNote on the tablet costs you some pen feel and buys you a system that works on every device you own and does not depend on a partnership between two companies.
If you use both for different things, formalise it. Samsung Notes for handwritten capture, OneNote for anything typed, structured or shared. Decide by input method rather than by topic, and accept that the two will no longer meet.
If you are leaving Android eventually, leave now. Samsung Notes does not follow you off Galaxy hardware. Migrating five years later is much worse than migrating today.
Getting your notes out before August
Do this whichever option you pick.
Export from Samsung Notes by selecting notes and exporting as PDF or, where available, as text or image files. PDF preserves handwriting appearance and loses editability, which is the standard trade in this category. There is no bulk export that keeps ink as ink.
Check what already reached OneNote. Do not assume the mirror was complete. Sync failures in one-way bridges are silent by design.
Keep the export off both clouds. A copy on a drive you control, which is the point made in syncing notes across devices: sync is not backup, and a mirror of a mirror is not either.
If you are moving to a third app entirely, the staged process in how to switch notes apps applies. The short version: export first, archive the old notes in one searchable folder, rebuild only the notes you actually use, and run both for two weeks.
The wider lesson
An integration between two large companies, announced with fanfare, ended with an in-app notice and no explanation. Nothing was lost, this time, because the sync was a copy rather than the only home.
That is the design rule worth taking away. Any workflow whose critical step is a bridge between two vendors is a workflow with an expiry date you do not control. Ask where a note lives if the connector disappears, and if the answer is "in the connector", fix it before the notice appears.
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