Stay on Lock Screen After Face Unlock
If your phone jumps straight to the home screen after face unlock, you lose the chance to glance at notifications or widgets on the lock screen first. Other users want the opposite and prefer to land on the home screen right away without an extra tap. This behavior comes from a single toggle hidden inside the Face unlock settings on your Xiaomi phone.
Set a New Alarm
Waking up on time with a Xiaomi phone means finding the right spot to add a repeating schedule, a custom label, or a different ringtone for each alarm. Many users only set a one-off alarm and miss the options for weekday repetition, vibration, or automatic deletion after the alarm rings. Getting these details wrong means the alarm either fires on the wrong days or disappears after a single use when you actually wanted it daily.
Show or Hide Week Numbers in Calendar
Scheduling an event and trying to figure out which calendar week it falls into turns into quick mental math every time. The Calendar app on Xiaomi phones can display the week number next to every row, but the option sits buried in a settings menu most people never open.
Change Wallpaper on Home Screen
Tapping and holding the home screen only gives you a handful of preset wallpapers to pick from. If you want a specific photo from a particular folder set as your background, that shortcut alone won't get you there.
Adjust Ringtone Volume for Calls and Notifications
If calls ring too loud while notifications stay silent, the culprit is usually the separate volume sliders inside Sound & vibration. Xiaomi phones control ringtone, reminder and notification volume independently, so lowering one slider does not affect the others. This mismatch often causes missed calls or alerts that trigger at the wrong volume.
Uninstall App Updates
If an app starts crashing, draining battery, or losing features right after an update on your Xiaomi phone, the new version is usually the cause. Instead of waiting for another patch, you can roll the app back to the version that shipped with your system and keep your data intact.
Battery Saver: Extra Power Optimization Options
If Battery saver is switched on but your Xiaomi phone still lights up the screen for every notification, the standard saver mode is not doing its full job. Always-on display can also keep draining power even while Battery saver is active. Two extra toggles sit outside the main Battery saver screen and control exactly this behavior.
Search Bar in Notification Shade
Pulling down the notification shade on a Xiaomi phone sometimes shows an extra search field at the top that you never asked for, or the opposite happens and you want that shortcut back. This toggle sits in Mi Browser, not in the notification settings where most people go looking for it. Without knowing that, the option seems to be missing entirely.
Change Camera Picture Quality
If your camera storage fills up fast or photos take too long to share, the picture quality setting in the MIUI camera app is often the reason. Xiaomi's camera defaults to a high resolution that produces large files, even when you only need a quick snapshot. Switching between High, Standard, and Low lets you balance sharpness against file size for each situation.
Switch to Scientific Calculator Mode
You open the Calculator app on your Xiaomi phone expecting only basic math, but functions like sine, cosine, tangent, square roots or Pi are nowhere to be found. Many users assume the app simply lacks these tools, when in fact they are hidden behind a display mode that most people never trigger. Without knowing the trick, you end up switching to a third-party app for calculations your phone already supports.
Set an Alternate Calendar
If your Calendar app only shows the Gregorian calendar, dates for other systems like the Hijri, Hebrew or Chinese calendar stay invisible in event details. This is controlled by a setting hidden inside General settings that most people never open.
Change Font Size
Reading long texts on a small screen strains your eyes if the system font stays too small, and cranking up brightness alone does not fix that. On Xiaomi phones the text scale sits in its own menu, separate from general display settings, which is why many people never find it. MIUI offers six size steps instead of a simple small/medium/large switch, so getting the right level takes a bit of trial and error.
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.
Manage Device Administrator Apps
An app you want to uninstall on your Xiaomi phone refuses to go away, or a widget keeps nagging you about admin permissions. Device administrator apps get elevated rights to change security settings or wipe data remotely, which is exactly what blocks a normal uninstall. Turning off that permission is usually the fix before the app can finally be removed.
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.
Restore a Local Backup
If you deleted an app or lost data on your Xiaomi phone, you don't need a full factory reset to get it back. MIUI keeps local backups separate from Google and Xiaomi Cloud backups, and picking the wrong one often leaves apps or settings missing. Knowing which backup type actually contains your data saves time before you start the restore.
Send MMS Message
Xiaomi Messages does not offer a separate MMS button, so it is easy to assume attachments go out as a normal text message. As soon as you add a photo, video, or .gif to a chat, the app switches the message to multimedia format automatically. If your carrier has MMS disabled or your mobile data is off, that message can silently fail to send.
Download Videos via Mi Browser
Saving a video from Facebook, YouTube or Vimeo on a Xiaomi phone usually means installing a separate downloader app first. Mi Browser can skip that step, but only if you know where the download option for links is hidden in the profile menu. Without it, a pasted video link just opens for streaming instead of saving to your storage.
Reorder Keyboard Languages
If your Xiaomi phone keeps switching to the wrong keyboard language after you added a second or third layout, MIUI is simply using the wrong priority order. The keyboard picks its default language from the order you set in Manage keyboards, not from the one you type most often. Autocorrect and word suggestions follow that same order until you rearrange it.
Schedule Dark Mode Automatically
Switching dark mode on and off every day by hand gets tedious, especially when you only want it active at night. Xiaomi phones can handle this automatically, but the scheduler sits right next to the regular dark mode switch and is easy to miss. Without setting a start and end time, the display keeps whatever theme you last picked instead of changing on its own.
Set the Time Manually
If the clock on your Xiaomi phone keeps jumping back to the wrong hour right after you edit it, the Use network-provided time toggle is still active in the background. Xiaomi phones pull the time straight from your mobile network or Wi-Fi connection, so any manual change gets overwritten within seconds. That sync option has to be switched off first before a custom time will actually stick.
Turn Front Camera Mirroring On or Off
Selfies taken with your Xiaomi front camera often look flipped compared to how other people actually see you, especially when text or logos appear reversed in the background. This happens because MIUI mirrors the preview and, on many devices, the saved photo to match what you see in the viewfinder. The mirroring setting controls whether your final shot keeps that flipped look or saves a true-to-life version.
Dark or Light Theme for the Phone App
If the Phone app keeps showing a bright white call screen while the rest of your Xiaomi runs in Dark mode, the dialer has its own theme setting separate from the system. This mismatch usually happens because the app theme was never linked to System default, or it got reset after an update. It affects the call screen, contact list and dial pad, not just the notification bar.
Turn HDR On or Off in Camera
Photos taken against bright light or in high-contrast scenes sometimes look overprocessed, flat, or slightly blurred on Xiaomi phones. This happens when HDR (High Dynamic Range) automatically merges several exposures into one shot, which also slows down capture for moving subjects.