No, Microsoft Is Not Closing OneNote (Only One Version of It)
You may have seen the headline this week that OneNote, Microsoft’s wildly popular note-taking app, is shutting down. This is not the case: only a specific version of OneNote called “OneNote for Windows 10” is being shut down.
What does it mean? If you don’t use Windows, this news doesn’t apply to you. If you’re using Windows and your version of OneNote doesn’t have “OneNote for Windows 10” at the top of the window, this news doesn’t apply to you. If your version of OneNote says “OneNote for Windows 10” at the top of the window, then this is the news: the version of OneNote you’re currently using will end support on October 14th. However, you can download the desktop version of OneNote for free, and all your notes will be in sync.
It’s worth noting that the desktop version of OneNote offers features that OneNote for Windows 10 never had – for example, it can save your notebooks offline, meaning you don’t need a OneDrive account to use the app. And this closure is by no means a surprise—Microsoft announced this transition would happen years ago.
However, not everyone is happy about this. OneNote for Windows 10 was designed to work well on mobile devices, and to this day, some users prefer it for touchscreen Windows devices. I tested both versions while writing and regularly updating PCMag’s OneNote review , and personally I find the desktop version more complete, but I can see why some might prefer the “Windows 10” version—it’s clean, fast, and does what most people want.
As of this writing, you can still download OneNote for Windows 10 from this link . Microsoft advises you not to do this and plans to show pop-ups and even deliberately slow down sync speeds to convince people to switch. Support will end completely in October, after which there will be no security updates, and if history is any indication, functionality will likely slowly degrade.
So, if you’re using OneNote for Windows 10, it’s time to figure out what you want to use for note-taking in the future. I would recommend downloading and trying out the desktop version of OneNote first. If you’re not a fan, there are other note-taking apps: Obsidian, which I wrote about , can even import your notes from OneNote .