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Samsung Smart Switch is Samsung's own free transfer tool for Windows, it copies photos, contacts, messages and app data from an old phone to a new Galaxy and backs the whole device up to your PC.
A new phone is only as good as the stuff you manage to bring with it.
Samsung Smart Switch is Samsung's own free answer to that problem: connect your old handset, connect the new Galaxy, and it copies photos, contacts, messages, call logs, calendars and settings across.
It also works as a plain backup tool, keeping a full copy of your phone on your PC so you have something to restore from when a device is lost, broken or reset.
Which Windows Version Is Actually Current
This is worth two minutes of your time, because the internet is currently full of wrong answers.
Samsung now ships Windows updates through the Microsoft Store, where the current version is 5.0.48.0, released on 8 July 2026.
The older standalone installer, the one numbered 4.3.24062, has not been rebuilt since 2024. Both still install and run, but only one of them is getting fixes.
So: take the Microsoft Store version if you want the maintained one. The standalone installer is still useful if you are working on a machine where the Store is unavailable or locked down by an administrator, which is common on work laptops, just know you are running the 2024 build.
What It Moves, And What It Quietly Leaves Behind
Most guides list what Smart Switch transfers. The more useful list is what it does not, because that is where people get caught out after they have already wiped the old phone.
It reliably brings across contacts, text messages, call history, photos, videos, music, documents, calendar entries, alarms, voice memos, Samsung Notes, Wi-Fi settings and your home screen layout. That covers most of what people actually miss.
The gaps are worth reading twice:
- App data only moves between Galaxy devices. Coming from a non-Samsung Android or an iPhone, you get the apps suggested for reinstall, but your progress, logins and in-app settings do not come with them.
- Anything with DRM copy protection will not transfer. This mostly bites on music bought before 2009 and on films and shows from stores that lock their files.
- Email is excluded by default unless you turn on encryption for the backup.
- Your backup is not browsable on the PC. It is a restore file, not a folder you can dig through. Messages in particular cannot be read on the computer.
- Transfers only run one way. Smart Switch moves data to a Galaxy. It will not move anything onto an iPhone.
None of this makes the tool a poor choice, it is still the most complete free option for a Galaxy. It just means the old phone stays switched on until you have confirmed the new one has everything.
The Secure Folder Change Worth Knowing About
Samsung has discontinued Secure Folder backup. You can still restore a Secure Folder from a backup you made previously, but that restore no longer works on Android 16 and One UI 8 or higher. Samsung's own guidance is to move Secure Folder contents with a direct phone-to-phone Smart Switch transfer instead of routing it through the PC. If your Secure Folder holds anything you cannot lose, sort that out before you factory reset anything.
Coming From an iPhone
Smart Switch handles iPhone migration in two ways: by cable, or by restoring an iTunes backup stored on the PC. Contacts, calendars, notes, call history, bookmarks, photos, Live Photos, videos, documents, voice memos, Wi-Fi details and alarms all come across.
Two catches. Music and video bought through iTunes cannot be pulled from iCloud, and apps themselves do not transfer, you get recommendations to reinstall the equivalents.
The other iPhone-shaped problem lands after the move, when your photos turn out to be HEIC files and Windows will not open them. That is a separate fix and a quick one: CopyTrans HEIC adds HEIC support to Windows Photo Viewer, HEIC Image Extension and HEIF Image Extensions plug it into the built-in Windows apps, and iMazing Converter batch-converts a whole folder to JPG. The guide on opening HEVC, HEIC and HEIF files walks through the options if you would rather read first.
What You Need Before You Start
Windows 10 or later, a USB cable that carries data rather than just power, and enough free drive space for the backup. On Windows N and KN editions you will also need Microsoft's Media Feature Pack, which supplies media components those editions ship without. Android 4.3 or later on the source phone covers ordinary transfers, and Android 7.0 or later is needed for encrypted data.
One practical note: many charging cables carry power only. If your PC never notices the phone at all, swap the cable before you start troubleshooting drivers.
Backing Up Your Galaxy To The PC
The backup side is the part worth setting up even when you are not changing phones, and it is the reason to keep Smart Switch installed after the migration is done.
- Install Smart Switch on the PC and open it before you plug anything in.
- Connect the phone with a data cable, then unlock it and approve the access prompt that appears on the phone's screen.
- Choose Backup, and if you want your email included, switch on backup encryption and set a password you will remember.
- Leave both devices alone until it finishes. A large photo library takes a while, and interrupting it means starting over.
- Check the summary at the end for anything listed as skipped, before you reset or sell the old phone.
Where Your Photos And Videos Land Afterwards
Once everything is on the new phone, the usual next question is what to do with the copy sitting on the PC. Recent Galaxy phones record video in HEVC, which is efficient but not universally supported, so those clips may refuse to play in older software. HEVC Video Extension adds playback to the built-in Windows apps, VLC Media Player plays them with nothing extra installed, and the K-Lite Codec Pack covers everything else in one go.
For converting phone footage into something you can edit or share, HandBrake is the free standard. For sorting through the photos, PicView and IrfanView are both far quicker than the default viewer on a folder of several thousand images, and Mp3tag will clean up the artist and album details on music that came off the old handset with its tags mangled.
Smart Switch and the Kies It Replaced
If you have owned Galaxy phones for a long time you may remember Samsung Kies, the older desktop manager. Kies was retired years ago and only ever supported handsets up to the Galaxy Note 3 era. Smart Switch is its replacement, and there is no reason to install Kies on a modern phone. The rest of the category sits in mobile device tools, and if you are working the other direction, on an iPhone or iPad from a Windows PC, 3uTools covers that ground.
Once You Are On The New Phone
Smart Switch also does a straight phone-to-phone transfer over Wi-Fi or a USB-C cable, with no computer involved at all, which is usually faster when both handsets are in front of you. Use the PC version when you want the backup kept somewhere safe, when the old phone is an iPhone whose backup already lives in iTunes, or when the new phone does not have the storage headroom to receive everything at once.
For moving individual files between phones later on, MX Share handles it directly between devices. On the media side, MX Player, VLC for Android and AIMP for Android cover video and music playback on the Galaxy itself, and the full Android app section has the rest.
Who Should Look Elsewhere
If your new phone is not a Galaxy, this is the wrong tool, transfers only run toward Samsung devices. If you are moving to an iPhone, Apple's own Move to iOS handles that direction. If what you want is a browsable archive you can open and search on the computer rather than a sealed restore file, copy your photos and documents across manually and use Smart Switch only for the phone-specific data. And if you are on a managed work PC where the Microsoft Store is blocked and the 2024 standalone build will not install either, a direct phone-to-phone transfer skips the computer entirely.
