Microsoft is ending the direct sync between Samsung Gallery and OneDrive on September 30, 2026, forcing Samsung phone owners who rely on that setup to change how their photos and videos are backed up. Existing OneDrive files will stay safe, but they will stop showing up inside Samsung Gallery, which is a tidy way of saying the old convenience is going away.
For Microsoft, the move nudges users toward its own OneDrive app and camera backup tools. For Samsung, it removes a built-in shortcut that made cloud backup feel almost invisible, which is exactly why people liked it in the first place.
What changes on September 30
After the deadline, Samsung Gallery will no longer sync directly with OneDrive, and new users will not be able to connect the two apps. Photos and videos already stored in OneDrive will also vanish from the Samsung Gallery interface, but Microsoft says the files themselves will not be deleted or altered.
Users will still be able to open those backups through the OneDrive app or on the web. That distinction matters: your data survives, the integration does not. In other words, Microsoft is retiring the bridge, not burning the house down.
How Samsung users can keep backing up media
If you want to keep sending new photos and videos to Microsoft after the cutoff, you will need to use OneDrive’s own camera backup feature instead of Samsung Gallery’s built-in path. That means installing the OneDrive app, signing in with a Microsoft account, and switching the backup option on from the account profile in the top left corner.
- Open the OneDrive app
- Sign in to a Microsoft account
- Go to the account profile in the top left corner
- Select ”Camera backup”
- Turn it on and grant media access
Why Samsung Gallery and OneDrive are being split
This is another reminder that cloud features built into phone software are never as permanent as they feel. Samsung and Microsoft have used these partnerships before to make storage painless; now the companies are asking users to do a little more work, which is usually how platform control starts to reassert itself.
The timing also fits a broader pattern across consumer tech: integrations get trimmed, then replaced with app-driven services that keep users inside a company’s own ecosystem. Handy for the vendor, mildly annoying for everyone else. The practical question now is whether Samsung users will stick with OneDrive, or take the hint and move their backups somewhere less dependent on someone else’s favorite toggle.