Enable Reading Mode in Mi Browser
Bright white pages in Mi Browser can strain your eyes during long reading sessions, especially at night. Xiaomi's reading mode swaps sharp whites for a warmer tone and dims contrast to reduce eye strain, but many people miss the intensity slider that controls how strong the effect actually is. Without adjusting it, the change can feel too subtle or too aggressive.
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.
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.
Add New Browser Tabs
Closing your current page every time you want to check something else in Mi Browser gets old fast. If you cannot find a way to browse two pages at once without losing your place, the tab feature in Mi Browser solves that without extra apps.
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.
Fingerprint Shutter: Enable or Disable
If your Xiaomi phone snaps a photo every time you rest a finger on the fingerprint sensor while the Camera app is open, the fingerprint shutter option is turned on. Some users only notice this after an accidental shot ends up in the gallery, others want to turn it on deliberately for a steadier one-tap trigger. Either way, the setting lives inside the Camera app itself, not in the general phone settings.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Rename a Fingerprint
Every fingerprint you add on a Xiaomi phone gets a generic label like Finger 1 or Finger 2, which makes no sense once you have three or four saved. If you cannot tell your thumb from your index finger in the list, renaming them is the only way to keep the Fingerprint unlock screen readable.
Set Up an App Timer
If an app on your Xiaomi phone keeps eating hours of your day without you noticing, MIUI does not limit it automatically. Digital Wellbeing only tracks usage in the background unless you configure a timer yourself for that app. Without that timer, games or social media apps stay open all day, no matter how long you actually meant to use them.
Share a Contact via Message or App
Retyping a phone number into a text message often introduces errors, especially with long international formats. On Xiaomi phones, the Contacts app lets you send a person's saved details directly through messaging or email without typing anything manually. This keeps every field intact and avoids typos on both sides.
Turn Off Display Animations
Menus and apps on your Xiaomi phone fade in and out with a noticeable delay, and swipe transitions feel slower than the actions behind them. This comes from a system-wide animation effect that MIUI applies to almost every screen change. On older or budget hardware, that extra motion can make the whole interface feel less responsive than it actually is.
Change Password for a Saved Wi-Fi Network
If your router password changed, your Xiaomi phone still tries to connect with the old one and just shows Saved, not connected. This is common after a router reset or a switch to a new internet provider. You do not need to forget the network and start over, the saved entry can be updated directly.
Quick Ball Shortcuts and Behavior Settings
If the floating Quick ball only opens one fixed app or keeps popping up during video playback, its behavior settings are still on default. MIUI lets you change the trigger gesture, auto-hide rules and screen position, but these options sit outside the shortcut list and get overlooked easily.
Set Ringtone for Incoming Calls
When every incoming call on your Xiaomi phone uses the same generic tone, or a video calling app ignores your chosen sound completely, the default ringtone setting is usually the cause. Dual-SIM users often run into a second issue: one SIM plays the wrong tone because each line can carry its own ringtone. Both problems trace back to the same sound settings that MIUI applies system-wide.
Manage Displayed Calendar Accounts
If every linked account shows up in the Calendar app at once, work meetings and private appointments end up mixed together in one view. This happens because the Calendar app displays all synced accounts by default, with no separation between personal and work calendars. You can turn individual accounts on or off without removing them from the device.
Change System Language
If your Xiaomi phone ended up in a language you cannot read, or you simply want to switch after setup, you do not need to go through the activation wizard again. The system language lives in its own settings menu, separate from the one-time language screen you saw when you first turned on the phone. This also affects keyboard suggestions and how some apps display their text.
Key Long-Press Delay
If holding down a key on your Xiaomi keyboard inserts a symbol too fast or not at all, the long-press delay is usually the reason. MIUI ships with a fixed 300ms wait before a held key triggers its second character. You can move that value anywhere between 100ms and 700ms to match your typing speed.
Set a Daily Mobile Data Usage Limit
A monthly data cap does not catch the one day you binge-watch or download something huge, and by the time the monthly warning fires the damage is done. On Xiaomi phones you can add a separate daily threshold so heavy usage gets flagged the same day it happens. You also decide whether MIUI just warns you or cuts mobile data automatically once the limit is hit.