Turn On/Off Proximity Sensor During Calls
If your Xiaomi screen stays lit while it is pressed against your ear during a call, you can end up muting yourself, switching to speaker, or hanging up by accident. This usually happens when the proximity sensor is switched off, so the display keeps reacting to touch instead of going dark near your face. A quick check in the call settings tells you whether the sensor is active.
Auto-answer for Incoming Calls
If calls on your Xiaomi phone connect themselves before you even touch the screen, Auto-answer is likely switched on in the background. This MIUI feature can pick up every call after a set delay, or only when a Bluetooth headset is connected. Missing that toggle means you lose the chance to reject a call while it is still ringing.
Turn Auto-capitalization On or Off
If your Xiaomi keyboard keeps capitalizing letters you want lowercase - like usernames, code snippets, or crypto addresses - auto-capitalization is likely running in the background. It automatically capitalizes the first letter after a period or new sentence, which speeds up regular typing but gets in the way for technical text. The setting sits inside the keyboard's text correction options, not the main system settings.
Set Up Automatic Cache Clearing
Cache files pile up quietly in the background and can eat into your storage or slow down apps over time. Xiaomi phones running MIUI include a setting that clears this cache on its own once the screen locks, but it is off or set to a schedule you may not want. Adjusting the timing decides how often your device cleans up automatically without you doing it by hand.
Assign a Custom Ringtone to a Contact
If every incoming call sounds the same, you have to check the screen to know who is calling before you pick up. On Xiaomi phones, the default ringtone applies to all contacts unless you override it manually for specific people.
Quick Settings Panel Access
If toggles like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or the flashlight seem to be missing from your quick settings, you probably have not fully expanded the panel yet. On Xiaomi phones, the complete quick settings grid sits behind a second swipe-down gesture, which is easy to miss. Without knowing this, you end up searching the full settings menu for functions that should be a single tap away.
Change Call Waiting Notification Sound
If the call waiting tone plays continuously instead of just a short beep, or a second incoming call barely gets your attention, the notification style set for call waiting is likely the cause. Xiaomi phones let you pick between a single tone, a repeating tone, or a tone combined with vibration, and the wrong choice makes overlapping calls easy to miss or annoying to handle.
Set a Custom Ringtone for Calls
If your Xiaomi phone still rings with a stock tone and you want a favorite song for incoming calls instead, the built-in ringtone list only shows preset options at first glance. MIUI actually lets you pick any audio file already stored on your phone, without moving it into a dedicated ringtone folder. On dual SIM devices, the ringtone also needs to be set separately for each SIM card.
Turn On/Off Call Forwarding
Calls landing in voicemail even though your phone never rang usually means call forwarding is already active in the background. On many Xiaomi phones the network sets forwarding for 'busy', 'unanswered' and 'unreachable' cases by default, so you might not notice it until a call disappears. Each of these forwarding rules can be switched on or off separately, or redirected to a different number entirely.
Turn Color Inversion On or Off
If your Xiaomi phone suddenly shows a black background with white text everywhere, or photos and videos look like a photo negative, Color inversion is likely switched on. This accessibility feature swaps colors system-wide, including in apps, galleries, and the camera preview, which can make the phone look broken until you know where to turn it off.
Enable Reader View in Mi Browser
Long Wikipedia entries or news articles often mix text with ads, sidebars and menus that crowd a phone screen. Mi Browser has a reader view that strips a page down to just the article text and images. If the option seems to be missing on a particular page, it usually depends on how that page is built.
Desktop View in Mi Browser
Mobile sites on your Xiaomi phone often hide buttons, filters, or entire menus that only show up in the desktop layout. Mi Browser squeezes every page into a phone-friendly view by default, which helps scrolling but can block tools like advanced editors or full navigation bars. Switching to the desktop version brings those missing elements back without needing a computer.
Game Turbo Settings
Game Turbo hides a long list of toggles that most Xiaomi owners never open, covering things like Game Speed Booster, ingame shortcuts and how added apps get removed from the list. If a game still throttles mid-match, notifications keep breaking through, or an external screen behaves oddly while gaming, one of these switches is usually the cause. The settings panel controls all of this from a single screen, but the options are easy to miss.
Turn Accessibility Menu Shortcut On or Off
If a small floating icon suddenly shows up in the bottom right corner of your screen on your Xiaomi phone, the Accessibility menu shortcut has been switched on. This icon opens a panel with accessibility actions and does not change how the rest of the phone works. You can turn it on or off depending on whether you actually need those accessibility tools.
Add a Fingerprint
If you can only unlock your Xiaomi phone with one specific finger, you probably registered just a single fingerprint during setup. MIUI lets you store several fingerprints so both your left and right hand work for unlocking or confirming payments. Each saved fingerprint can also get its own name, which helps when the device is shared with family.
Set a Custom Notification Sound
If you pick a full song as your Xiaomi notification tone, only the first few seconds usually play before the sound gets cut off or overlaps with the next alert. MIUI lets you use almost any audio file stored on your phone as a notification sound, no matter which folder it sits in, but long tracks feel out of place for a quick alert. Trimming the file first keeps notifications short and easy to recognize.
Set a Default Home Screen
Tapping the home button always drops you on the wrong panel, especially if you keep several home screens or widget pages active on your Xiaomi phone. MIUI lets you pin one specific screen as the default target, but this setting is easy to miss and gets reset after a launcher change or update. Without it, the home button just returns to whichever screen you last viewed.
Set Start of Week in Calendar
If your calendar always opens on a Sunday even though you expect Monday to be the first column, the app is just following the region setting on your phone. This mismatch makes weekly planning confusing, especially when you compare dates with colleagues or family using a different week layout. A quick setting inside the Calendar app fixes the view for good.
Turn Call Barring On or Off
If your Xiaomi phone keeps racking up charges while roaming abroad, or you need to stop all incoming or outgoing calls for a while, call barring is the setting responsible. Unlike silencing a contact or using Do Not Disturb, call barring blocks calls at the network level and requires a password to change. Getting the wrong option enabled can also cut off calls you actually want, like international or roaming numbers.
Hide and Show Apps on the Home Screen
If an app keeps showing up on your home screen even though you do not want it visible, MIUI can hide it completely as long as App lock is turned on. Without App lock active, the option to hide apps simply does not appear in the menu. Once hidden, an app only reappears after you unlock it with your password or pattern.
Turn On, Off or Auto Camera Flash
If your Xiaomi camera fires the flash in bright rooms or refuses to light up a dark shot, the flash mode is set wrong. The camera app lets you force the flash on, force it off, or leave the decision to the automatic sensor. Getting this wrong ruins both photos and video clips shot in low light.
Change Preferred Network Type
If your phone shows no or barely any 4G/LTE signal in certain spots, calls drop and data stalls even though older 3G or 2G networks are still available nearby. The Preferred network type setting decides which mobile network your SIM tries first, and the wrong choice can leave you stuck searching for a signal instead of connecting to one that actually works.
Turn On/Off Long-press for Symbols
If numbers, accents or special characters only appear after holding down a key on your Xiaomi keyboard, Long-press for symbols is doing its job in the background. When this setting is off, those hidden symbols stay invisible and you cannot access them at all through a long press. The delay before a symbol gets inserted can also feel too short or too long, depending on how you type.
Notch Display per App
If one app stretches its content behind the notch while another leaves a black bar around it, the per-app notch setting is likely mismatched with that app's layout. This shows up mostly in games or video apps that were not built with a notch in mind. The fix depends on a setting Xiaomi lets you configure separately for each installed app.