Send Photos and Videos via Bluetooth
Sending a photo or video from your Xiaomi phone to a paired device sometimes stalls right after you tap Share, or the target device never shows up in the list. This usually comes down to picking the wrong sharing option or Bluetooth pairing not being active. The steps below use MIUI's file sharing menu, which works the same for pictures, videos and most other file types.
Snooze App Notifications
When a chat app or delivery tracker keeps buzzing during a meeting, muting it completely isn't always what you want. MIUI lets you pause a single notification for a set time instead of turning it off for good. This keeps the alert coming back later without touching the app's notification settings.
Configure Individual System App Settings
When Security, Messages, or Camera on your Xiaomi phone keeps auto-updating or asking for permissions you never approved, a hidden per-app toggle in System app settings is usually the cause. Each preinstalled MIUI app, from Calendar to Recorder, carries its own switches for updates, notifications, and background data that do not show up on the regular app info screen. Finding the right toggle for the right app is the only way to fix the behavior without disabling the whole app.
Record a Video with the Camera App
If the Xiaomi Camera app only shows photo mode when you open it, video recording is often just one swipe away and easy to miss. Some users also get confused about which button starts, pauses, and stops a recording, since the shutter button changes function depending on the mode. This mix-up leads to accidentally recorded clips or missed footage.
Set Up a Portable Wi-Fi Hotspot
If your Xiaomi phone still hands out a hotspot name and password nobody chose, other people nearby can guess it or connect without permission. A weak default SSID also makes it harder to spot your own hotspot among several devices in the same room. Setting a custom name and password fixes both problems and keeps the connection under your control.
Restrict Mobile Data Usage for an App
If a Xiaomi phone burns through your data plan even though you barely open certain apps, background data access is usually the cause. By default every installed app can use mobile data and Wi-Fi without restriction. On dual-SIM phones this applies separately to each SIM slot, which makes it harder to spot which line is actually consuming the data.
Turn Contact Sharing via Bluetooth On or Off
When you pair your Xiaomi phone with a car radio, the contact list sometimes stays empty even though the Bluetooth connection shows as active. That happens because MIUI keeps Contact sharing separate from the general Bluetooth toggle, so voice dialing and steering-wheel controls have no phonebook to pull from until you enable it. The same setting can also keep sharing your address book with a paired device after you no longer want it to.
Turn Off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Scanning for Location
Even with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth switched off, your Xiaomi phone can still scan nearby networks and devices to sharpen its location fix. Apps with location permission trigger this background scanning automatically, keeping your radios active more often than expected. If you want tighter control over when your phone searches for networks, the scanning setting needs to be adjusted separately from the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth toggles.
Set Touch & Hold Delay
If long-pressing an app icon on your Xiaomi home screen either opens the shortcut menu too fast by accident or takes too long to react, the touch and hold delay is set to the wrong stage. This timing controls how long you need to keep your finger down before a long-press action triggers, and it affects every control element that supports it, not just app shortcuts.
Back Up Phone Data to Google Drive
If your Xiaomi phone gets reset, lost or swapped for a new one, contacts, messages and app data disappear unless a backup exists somewhere else. MIUI has a built-in option to save that data to Google Drive, but the toggle sits buried in the general settings and is easy to miss until you actually need it.
Turn On App Lock
If anyone can open your banking, messaging, or gallery apps just by unlocking your phone, sensitive content stays exposed. Xiaomi phones include a separate app-level lock that adds a second layer of protection on top of your screen lock. Setting it up wrong, or skipping the fingerprint option, often leaves some apps unprotected.
Mark Contact as Favorite
If a contact you call or message often gets buried in a long list, you probably haven't set it as a favorite yet. Favorites move straight to the top of the Contacts app and speed up dialing from the Phone app. It's a quick toggle, but easy to miss since it's tucked inside the contact detail view.
Show Emojis in the Symbols Keyboard
On Xiaomi phones the symbols keyboard can display your most recently used emojis for quicker access, but that suggestion strip stays hidden by default. The Mi keyboard needs this behavior turned on separately before recent emojis appear next to the symbols and numbers.
Rename a Paired Bluetooth Device
When several Bluetooth accessories are paired to your Xiaomi phone, the device list can quickly fill up with cryptic model numbers or partial MAC addresses. Telling a pair of earbuds apart from a car stereo or a fitness tracker gets difficult once the default names look identical. Renaming each paired device gives you a clear label instead of guessing which entry belongs to which gadget.
Change App Lock Password Type
If you set up App lock on your Xiaomi phone with a pattern and now want something faster or more secure, you are not stuck with that choice. The lock type you picked during setup can be swapped for a PIN or password at any time, without disabling App lock first.
Add a New Contact
Saving a new phone number on a Xiaomi device sometimes feels confusing because the Contacts app hides extra fields like birthday, address or company behind a single Add button. Many users only enter a name and number, then wonder later why the birthday never shows up in the calendar. The trick is knowing which fields to expand before you save the entry.
Turn On High Contrast Text
Thin system fonts in MIUI can blur together against busy wallpapers or in bright sunlight, which makes reading notifications and menus tiring. The High contrast text option adds a bold black outline around letters to separate them from the background. On several Xiaomi phones this switch sits in an experimental accessibility section, so it can behave slightly differently between apps.
Turn Speak Passwords On or Off for TalkBack
When TalkBack reads your password out loud while you type it, anyone nearby can hear sensitive login data. On Xiaomi phones with MIUI, this happens because the Speak passwords option inside TalkBack is turned on by default. Switching it off keeps entered characters silent, though you lose the audio confirmation that a password was typed correctly.
Power Button Ends Call Setting
Ending a call on a Xiaomi phone usually means tapping the red hang-up button on screen, which is awkward one-handed or when the display is hard to reach. MIUI has a hidden accessibility toggle that lets you end calls with the power button instead, but it is turned off by default and easy to miss in the settings.
Turn On/Off Emergency SOS
If your Xiaomi phone fires off an emergency text every time you grab it too fast, Emergency SOS is likely reacting to five quick presses of the power button. The feature sends your location and, if you choose, a summary of your last hour of call activity to selected contacts. Turning it off - or setting it up properly first - stops accidental alerts and unwanted location shares.
Turn On/Off Auto-Update
If your Xiaomi phone keeps installing system updates overnight without asking, or you never get notified when a new MIUI version is ready, the auto-update setting is likely working against you. Some users want updates to install by themselves while they sleep, others prefer full control before anything changes on the device. This setting decides which of the two happens.
Change Default Apps
If your Xiaomi phone keeps asking which app to use every time you open a song, a link, or a photo, no default app is set for that file type. MIUI stores these preferences per action, and once none is chosen, the selection prompt reappears every time you tap the file.
Set Default SIM Card for Outgoing Calls
Every time you dial a number, your Xiaomi phone pops up a menu asking which SIM card to use for the call. If you only ever tap the same option anyway, that extra confirmation step just slows down dialing. A fixed default SIM removes the prompt for good.
Reject an Incoming Call
If a call comes in at a bad moment on your Xiaomi phone, you don't have to answer it or wait it out. The red decline icon on the incoming call screen lets you dismiss it right away, but only if you swipe correctly. Miss the gesture and the call keeps ringing or gets answered by accident.