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.
Delete an Album in Gallery
Deleting an album on your Xiaomi phone also deletes every photo and video still stored inside it. This catches a lot of people off guard when they just wanted to tidy up their Gallery app and end up losing media they meant to keep. Knowing which albums are safe to remove and which ones hold originals is key before you tap delete.
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.
Fix Fisheye Distortion in Ultra Wide Shots
Ultra wide shots on your Xiaomi phone sometimes bulge at the edges, making straight lines look curved like a fisheye lens. This happens because the wide field of view stretches objects near the corners of the frame. The camera app can correct this automatically, but the setting is easy to overlook.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Manage Updates for System Apps
If your Xiaomi phone keeps nagging you about system app updates - or stays silent when new versions are actually ready - the System apps updater settings are probably not set the way you want. MIUI lets you control whether update notifications show up, whether updates install automatically, and whether downloads run on Wi-Fi only or also over mobile data. Leaving these settings on default can mean unexpected data usage or missed fixes.
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.
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 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.
Turn On/Off Camera Live Tips
If your Xiaomi camera keeps popping up messages about a dirty lens or telling you to hold the phone level, the Live tips feature is running in the background. These prompts are useful for beginners but can get in the way during fast shooting, and not everyone wants every single tip active.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.