Samsung has begun notifying Galaxy phone owners in some markets that its Samsung News service will shut down later this year, potentially ending another of the company's home screen features. Users in South Korea and India have received the notice, according to reports, and the discontinuation is expected to extend beyond those two countries.
The shutdown covers more than the standalone app. Samsung News widgets and the media page on the home screen in those regions are also set to stop working on December 21, 2026. Whether Galaxy users in the United States will see the same change remains unconfirmed, and Samsung has not responded to requests for comment on its plans for the American market.
The timing is notable because Samsung announced a significant Samsung News update only a few months ago, adding short-form videos from premium publishers including ABC News and USA Today. The service itself has been rebranded repeatedly over the years, launching as Bixby Home in 2017, becoming Samsung Daily in 2019 and relaunching as Samsung Free in 2020. None of those iterations gained much traction among Galaxy users, and Samsung News arrived in 2023 as the company's latest effort to compete with news aggregators such as Google Discover.
Samsung's decision may reflect that Google Discover is already enabled by default on recent versions of One UI, reducing the rationale for maintaining a separate news hub. The broader news aggregator business is also under pressure as AI features in services like Google Discover change how phone users consume news. For now, only users in South Korea and India have been told the service is ending, though outlets including SamMobile describe a wider rollout as highly likely.
If Samsung News is retired everywhere, it would not be the first One UI feature the company has handed off to a Google equivalent. In 2021, Samsung made Google Messages the default texting app in place of Samsung Messages, and in April 2026 it officially discontinued Messages in the US, directing users to switch to Google Messages.
Samsung News users who want to move away from the service before the December 21 cutoff can switch to Google Discover by holding an empty area of the home screen, swiping left and selecting Google Discover in place of Samsung News. The news panel can also be removed entirely by opening the settings icon at the top of that screen and turning off the Media Page toggle.
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