MIUI: 12 ingenious features that your Xiaomi phone offers

In this article we will focus on some particularly interesting or potentially useful features of MIUI. If you want to get a more comprehensive look at Xiaomi’s user interface, you can check out our in-depth review of MIUI 12. The new MIUI 13 version is also rolling out, so you can check if your Xiaomi or Redmi smartphone will receive the MIUI 13 update.

Finally, not all functions are available on all Xiaomi smartphones. For this article I used a Xiaomi 11T Pro with MIUI 12.5.19. If your smartphone doesn’t have any of the features listed below, it might be time to buy a new smartphone. Check out our comparison of the best Xiaomi smartphones.

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Watch YouTube videos on the locked screen

Google intentionally prevents you from being able to watch videos on your Android smartphone in the background or with the screen locked. In this way, Google wants to force you to take out its YouTube Premium subscription.

There are numerous guides and tutorials online to avoid this blackmail. MIUI offers a partial but above all native solution. With the “Video Toolbox” menu you can start videos while the smartphone is locked – and the playback will not be stopped!

1. Go to the settings
2. go to Special functions.
3. go to video toolbox and activates the function.
4. Then go to the video toolbox to Manage video apps and activates the switch for YouTube.
5. Open YouTube, start a video, tap the translucent bar on the left or right edge of the screen (depending on what you choose).
6. Swipes menu video toolbar once to the left to the first line.
7. Taps Play the audio of the video when the screen is off.

Disable ads in MIUI

To really disable all ads in the MIUI interface, you have to go through several steps. It would take an entire article to describe them all in detail. So it’s a good thing that we’ve linked one below. But you can start with the most important thing, which is to disable the MSA application aka MIUI System Ads.

1. go to settings.
2. go to Passwords & Security.
3. Disabled under Authorization & Revocation the MSA switch.
4. Wait ten seconds and press to confirm Withdraw.

This intervention should remove most ads. However, these are only the “System” advertisements in the MIUI interface. Other ads might remain in some of the native Xiaomi applications and therefore need to be disabled one by one. What luck, isn’t it?

Get MIUI updates faster

Xiaomi doesn’t strictly follow Google when it comes to updates and the implementation of new features. Xiaomi fans often think that it is not the Android version that matters, but the MIUI version. But like every Chinese manufacturer, Xiaomi deploys the new versions of its overlay software in China first. The global versions for the rest of the world will follow later. However, there is a trick to get the MIUI updates in Europe before everyone else.

1. Go to the settings.
2. go to About the device.
3. Tap on the widget MIUI version in the upper left corner.
4. Tap that Hamburger menu top right.
5. go to settings for updates.
6. Enabled under miscellaneous the function updates received earlier.

With this feature, Xiaomi will put your smartphone on the list of those who will receive stable versions of MIUI first. This means that you can get MIUI 13 in the global version a few days before all other European users. But that also means you’re on the front lines of the bugs that come with every update rollout.

This is how you create MIUI shortcuts with the back tap function

With MIUI’s back tap feature, you can use the double and triple tap gestures on the back of your Xiaomi smartphone to create shortcuts (take a screenshot, etc.).

This is how you activate the MIUI back-tap function on your Xiaomi smartphone:

1. Go to the settings.
2. go to Additional settings
3. go to shortcuts to gestures.
4. Chooses back tap (the translations by Xiaomi may be slightly different).
5. Chooses Double back tap and Triple back tap the end.
6. Choose which shortcut you want to associate with the gesture.

How to optimize your MIUI shortcuts with Quick Ball

Quick Ball or Touch Assistant is a special feature that allows for a virtual hotkey on your home screen. Pressing this floating button (Quick Ball > Ball > Shortcut) gives you access to a set of five shortcuts. You can assign multiple actions to each of these 5 shortcuts, such as B. return to home screen, mute, etc.

1. go to settings.
2. go to Additional settings and then to touch assistant.
3. Activate the touch assistant and then choose yours 5 shortcuts the end.
4. Tap from your home screen the floating speech bubbleto bring up the touch assistant.

Since the speech bubble is floating, you can move it anywhere on the start screen of your Xiaomi or Redmi smartphone and hide it by swiping it to the edge of the screen.

Stream your Xiaomi phone screen with Universal Casting Tool

Xiaomi allows you to stream any content from your smartphone screen to your TV or any other connected monitor or even PC.

1. go to settings and then to Connect & Share.
2. go to streaming and then activates the switch streaming.
3. Scans devices connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your smartphone.
4. Connect to your TV or PC.

This “Universal Casting Tool” also offers some additional features like the ability to hide elements on the screen with a simple tap or cast in the background and even when your Xiaomi smartphone is locked.

This is how you remove the Control Center

The MIUI Control Center is Xiaomi’s umpteenth “homage” to Apple. It’s a quick access menu separate from the notification bar, love it or hate it. For those of you who hate it, you can remove Control Center and go back to Classic View to have everything on one screen.

1. go to settings.
2. goes up Notifications & Control Center.
3. Types under control center on Control Center style.
4. Chooses Old version

How to activate the FPS counter

Real gamers know that the sacred FPS is inseparable from the gaming experience. If Call of Duty Mobile drops even a tiny frame below 60 FPS, I’ll throw my phone in the trash and buy a new one before I sue the manufacturer. It’s so!!!

1. Activates the developer options (press seven times on MIUI version in About this phone).
2. go to settings and then to Additional settings.
3. go to developer options.
4. Scroll down to the section monitoring.
5. Types under monitoring on power monitor.
6. Suppresses Frame Rate Monitor Tools on begin

The information displayed in real-time at the top left of the screen overlays the app screen. So that this doesn’t bother you, you can make the window smaller, move it or simply close it. Warning, this counter is different from the one offered by Google, which can also be found in the developer options (it seems to me that Google’s has problems with OLED screens).

Here’s how to activate your Super Wallpapers

This is a feature that caused a lot of buzz when MIUI 12 was released, but isn’t entirely new in 2022. Super Wallpapers are the animated wallpapers from Xiaomi. They offer nature and astronomy themes with spectacular views of Mars, for example. And when you unlock the Xiaomi smartphone, the screen background zooms in huge, which is very effective.

1. go to settings
2. go to background image.
3. Taps Awesome wallpapers.

This feature is not available by default on all Xiaomi smartphones. The manufacturer seems to reserve them for Xiaomi, Redmi and Poco smartphones with sufficiently powerful SoCs, ie at least in the upper mid-range. But rest easy, it’s pretty easy to make your own super wallpapers on any Android smartphone with APKs.

Activates sunlight mode to increase brightness

Every Android overlay offers an adaptive brightness, the level of which adapts to the ambient light. But not everyone uses this function, especially if you are used to gambling on your Xiaomi smartphone. For those who don’t use adaptive brightness but still want their screen to remain readable outdoors, MIUI offers a “sunlight mode”.

The idea behind this is that the brightness is automatically increased as soon as you leave the house. Basically, the brightness only changes automatically when you go outside in the sun. The rest of the time it stays at the level you set.

1. goes up settings
2. goes up screen and then up brightness level.
3. Activates the function sunlight mode (Adaptive brightness must be turned off beforehand).

How to “clean” your speakers

This hidden function should perhaps remain hidden. Xiaomi claims to be able to “clean” the speakers of its smartphones. The idea behind this is to produce a sound powerful enough to remove the dust that is clogging the speakers.

1. go to settings.
2. go to Additional settings.
3. Taps Clean speakers

It takes 30 seconds to clean and the sound sounds like a siren. Xiaomi recommends repeating the process 2 to 5 times depending on how dirty the speaker is. Personally, I absolutely do not believe in the effectiveness of this option. But who knows, maybe the placebo effect is worth the effort (and maybe I’m wrong).

That’s it for this guide to MIUI’s best features and hidden tricks. Was this article helpful to you? Did you discover a feature you didn’t already know about? Or do you have a tip that isn’t listed in this guide? Let us know in the comments.