Samsung's April 2026 Update Breaks Microsoft 365 Apps on Galaxy Phones

Samsung began rolling out its April 2026 Android security update - which fixes 47 vulnerabilities, 14 of them critical - to Galaxy devices around April 8, 2026. Within days, users started reporting that Microsoft apps break after installing it. The pattern is consistent: Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and Microsoft Authenticator work for a while, then stop - Teams loses everyone's presence and messages hang unsent, Authenticator stops delivering push notifications (and sometimes won't open), and Outlook can stop syncing or show a black screen. A dedicated Samsung Community thread grew past ten pages, and the issue was echoed on the r/Microsoft365 subreddit and Microsoft's Q&A forum. Rebooting restores the apps temporarily, but the problem returns.

Despite early speculation about Microsoft authentication, the cause identified in the Microsoft forum - and highlighted as a moderator-recommended answer - is a regression in Android System WebView introduced by Samsung's April 2026 security update, as heise also reports. WebView renders web content inside native apps, and Microsoft's apps lean on it for sign-in and embedded views, so a WebView regression cascades into Teams, Outlook, and Authenticator. Two independent observations point the same way: installing the Microsoft apps inside Samsung's Secure Folder (a Knox container) restores normal function, isolating the fault to the main user profile; and toggling Private DNS off resolves it for many, suggesting a connectivity/DNS interaction in the update rather than a Microsoft-side change.

Reports concentrate on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, with additional reports from S24 models, across multiple carriers and regions. One affected user who is also an IT support specialist noted that S26 Ultra and Z Flip 6 devices on equivalent firmware were not reporting the issue, suggesting it's tied to specific April 2026 builds rather than all Galaxy devices. The practical enterprise impact lands on organizations that require Microsoft Authenticator for MFA: when Authenticator stops delivering prompts, users on affected Galaxy phones can be blocked from signing in to Microsoft 365 and Entra ID-protected resources until they apply a workaround or switch temporarily to another MFA method.

Several community-verified workarounds restore the Microsoft apps. The most-endorsed fix is to roll back Android System WebView: go to Settings, search Android System WebView, open App details in store, tap Uninstall updates, reboot, then update WebView again and sign back into the apps. (If WebView isn't listed, find it under Settings > Google > All services > System services.) Alternatively, set Private DNS to Off (or to a provider like Cloudflare) under Settings > Connections > More connection settings and reboot; or install/move the Microsoft apps into Samsung Secure Folder, whose Knox isolation sidesteps the fault. Finally, update the affected Microsoft apps (Outlook, Teams, etc.) via the Play Store and restart - by late April this alone resolved it for many. Samsung advises against a factory reset, which does not address the underlying issue.

As of the reporting, neither Samsung nor Microsoft had published a formal advisory dedicated to the Microsoft-app breakage. Samsung acknowledged the issue informally - a user with an open Samsung Partner Hub case relayed that Samsung was aware and working on a resolution - while the actionable guidance came from the community and a Microsoft Q&A moderator-recommended answer. By late April, updating the affected Microsoft apps through the Play Store and restarting was reported to resolve the problem for many users, alongside the WebView and Private DNS workarounds. Organizations should treat the WebView rollback and app updates as the current remediation until a formal fix is confirmed.

Watch for a formal Samsung firmware update or a Microsoft app release that resolves the WebView interaction outright, which would remove the need for the manual workarounds. This isn't the first time a Samsung update has disrupted third-party apps via WebView - similar WebView-related breakages have occurred before - so IT teams managing Galaxy fleets should keep the WebView-rollback steps handy and consider staging Samsung security updates through a pilot ring where device management allows. For MFA resilience, ensure affected users have a backup authentication method configured so an Authenticator outage on one device doesn't lock them out.