How to transfer notes from Xiaomi to Samsung Galaxy: 5 proven ways

Why moving notes between Xiaomi and Samsung is not a trivial task

The transition from Xiaomi to Samsung Galaxy is often accompanied by unexpected difficulties – especially when it comes to transferring notes. Unlike photos or contacts, notes are stored in proprietary formats tied to the manufacturer’s ecosystem. Xiaomi’s Mi Notes use a closed sync protocol via the Mi Cloud, and Samsung Notes works exclusively with a Samsung Account or Microsoft OneNote account.

Compounding the problem, both brands are actively blocking direct data migration between competing ecosystems, such as Samsung’s Smart Switch, which does not officially support the transfer of notes from Xiaomi devices, although it successfully manages contacts and media files, leaving users with workarounds ranging from manual export to third-party services.

In this article, we will discuss 5 working methods for porting notes, including hidden Mi Cloud features, integration with Google Keep, and even a little-known trick with ADB for advanced users.

Method 1: Export notes via Mi Cloud (official method)

The most reliable way is to use the built-in export feature in the Mi Cloud, which works on all Xiaomi devices with MIUI 12 and later, but requires pre-configuring synchronization.

To move the notes:

• 📱 Open the Notes app on your Xiaomi.
• ☁️ Go to Settings. → Sync and make sure Mi Cloud option is enabled.
• 🔗 Sign in to your Mi Account (if not authorized).
• 📤 Click Export Notes (in some versions) MIUI The option is hidden behind a long tap on the note → More. → Exports).
• 📎 Select the format.txt or.html (the latter retains formatting).

Once exported, files can be uploaded to Google Drive or sent to yourself by mail and then opened on the Samsung Galaxy. However, there is a pitfall here: Samsung Notes does not support importing.html files. The solution is to use an intermediate service like Google Keep (more on this below).

Synchronization with Mi Cloud enabled

Installed the latest update of the app Notes

Free ≥500 MB in device memory

Notes do not contain multimedia (photo/video)

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⚠️ Note: If the notes contain handwritten text or scans of documents, exporting to.txt will result in the loss of this data. + OCR).

Method 2: Synchronize with Google Keep (Universal Method)

Google Keep is the only service that is guaranteed to work on both devices without restrictions, and the advantage of the method is that notes are synchronized in real time and save colors, tags and reminders.

Instructions:

1. 📲 Install Google Keep from Play Market on Xiaomi.
2. 🔄 Manually transfer notes from Mi Notes to Google Keep (copy text or export through Share). → Keep).
3. 🔗 Sign in to the same Google account on Samsung Galaxy.
4. 📥 Install Google Keep on Samsung and wait for sync.
5. 🔄 (Optional) Move notes from Keep to Samsung Notes via Export → Text file → importation of Samsung Notes.

The downside is manual labor: if you have hundreds of notes, it takes a long time, but it retains the structure of notes better than others, including nested lists and highlights.

Method 3: Transfer of notes from multimedia (photos, scans, handwritten text)

If your notes contain photos, document scans, or handwritten notes, standard export methods will not work, and a combination of screenshots + OCR (text recognition) will help.

Algorithm of action:

• 📸 Take a screenshot of each note (keep your food in check) + Reduce the volume on Xiaomi).
• 🖼️ Transfer screenshots to Samsung Galaxy via Google Photos or cable USB-OTG.
• 🔍 Use Google Lens (built into Google Photos) to recognize text: Open the screenshot → Press "Linza" → Emphasize the text → Copy.
• 📝 Insert the recognized text in Samsung Notes or Google Keep.

For handwritten notes, specialized software like Microsoft Lens or Adobe Scan will work more accurately, and these applications better recognize handwriting and save table formatting.

⚠️ Note: If the note contains sensitive information (passwords, passport scans), do not upload screenshots to the cloud. OCR, for example, ABBYY FineReader (there is a free version).

Method 4: Smart Switch – Why it doesn’t work and how to make it work

Samsung Smart Switch is positioned as a universal solution for data migration, but in practice, notes with Xiaomi are extremely rare.

However, there is a workaround:

1. 📱 Connect Xiaomi to Samsung Galaxy via cable USB-C → USB-C (adapter).
2. 🔄 Run Smart Switch on Samsung and select Get Data → Cable.
3. 📂 In the data transfer list, only mark "Other files" (notes may be hidden here).
4. 🔍 After transfer, check the Internal Storage folder. → SmartSwitch → Others for files with the.mnote extension.
5. 🛠️ Convert.mnote to readable format with Mi Note Tools (Python required).

The method is about 30 percent successful, and most often, the Smart Switch just ignores notes, so we recommend using it only as an additional way.

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If Xiaomi doesn’t see Smart Switch, try connecting via Wi-Fi Direct: on Xiaomi, activate the hotspot mode, and on Samsung, select Wireless Connection in Smart Switch.

Method 5: Advanced ADB Transfer (for technical users)

If you're ready to work with the command line, this method will allow you to extract notes directly from the Mi Notes database. The advantage is 100% data preservation, including time stamps and attachments.

Instructions:

1. 🖥️ Install. ADB Tools on PC.
2. 📱 On Xiaomi, activate Settings → The phone. → Version. MIUI (Tap 7 times to turn on the developer mode).
3. 🔧 Turn on Debugging. USB In Settings → Additionally. → For developers.
4. 🔌 Connect your phone to your PC and execute the commands: adb backup -f mi_notes.ab com.miui.notes adb pull /sdcard/mi_notes.ab
5. 📁 Unpack your backup with Android-backup-extractor: java -jar abe.jar unpack mi_notes.ab mi_notes.tar
6. 🔍 In a file. mi_notes Find the notes.db file is a SQLite note database.
7. 📤 Open the base with help DB Browser for SQLite and export the note table to CSV.

To import to Samsung, use Excel or Google Sheets to convert CSV to a user-friendly format, then manually transfer the data to Samsung Notes.

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ADB-The method is the only way to transfer archival notes that are not synchronized with the Mi Cloud, but it requires command line skills and is not suitable for beginners.

Frequent mistakes and their solutions

Even when following instructions, users face problems, and here are the most common ways to fix them:

• 🚫 "Mi Cloud does not sync notes": Check if Auto Sync is enabled in your Mi Account. If notes still don't appear in the cloud, try manually updating the data: Settings → Mi Cloud → Synchronize.
• 🔄 "Google Keep does not save formatting": The problem arises when copying through the clipboard. → Save to Keep from Mi Notes.
• 📱 "Samsung Notes does not import HTML": Samsung Notes does not support importing.html. Convert the file to.txt using Word or online converters, then import as plain text.
• 🔒 "ADB Do not see the device": Make sure that the PC has drivers for Xiaomi (download from the official site).If the problem remains, try the command adb kill-server → adb start-server.

⚠️ Note: If you post-transfer notes are displayed in hieroglyphics or cranks, the problem is encoding. Open the file in Notepad++ and convert into UTF-8 (code-menu → convert into UTF-8).

FAQ: Answers to popular questions