Hide or Show the Notch
If icons or app content get cut off by the camera cutout on your Xiaomi phone, the Notch display setting is likely still set to show full-screen content behind it. Some apps stretch their layout right into the cutout area, hiding status bar icons or clipping off parts of the interface. MIUI lets you switch between covering the Notch with a black bar or letting content run around it.
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.
Switch Contact Name Order (First/Last Name)
If your Xiaomi contact list always shows the first name before the last name, finding people gets harder when you organize contacts by family name or your workplace expects last-name-first lists. This affects how names appear in Contacts, the call log, and message threads alike. MIUI lets you flip that order without editing a single contact.
Turn MIUI Optimization On or Off
If your Xiaomi phone feels sluggish after enabling developer options, or certain apps crash or render oddly, the 'Turn on MIUI optimization' toggle inside developer options might be the cause. This setting controls how MIUI's custom interface layer interacts with the underlying Android rendering engine. Switching it off can fix app compatibility problems but also changes how some system apps look and behave.
Set the Default Media Volume Level
Videos, music, and games on your Xiaomi phone start way too loud or too quiet, and pressing the Volume buttons only helps once something is already playing. That happens because Media volume runs on its own channel, separate from ringtone and notification levels in MIUI.
Set the Monthly Data Usage Reset Date
If the data usage counter on your Xiaomi phone resets on a different day than your carrier billing cycle starts, the numbers you see never match your actual plan. This happens because the reset date in Data usage is set independently from your SIM contract and has to be adjusted manually. Without matching it, data warnings and remaining allowance calculations stay inaccurate all month.
Turn On/Off Contact Suggestions
When Contact suggestions are active on a Xiaomi phone, the keyboard pulls names, numbers and email addresses from your Contacts app while you type messages or fill out forms. That can be handy for quick replies, but it also means personal details from your address book show up as autocomplete hints in apps that have nothing to do with Contacts. If you want tighter control over what your keyboard suggests, this setting is the one to check.
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.
Mount SD Card
If you tapped Eject SD card or safely removed the card from your Xiaomi phone, the storage disappears from your file manager and apps stop saving to it. MIUI keeps the card unmounted until you tell it to reconnect, even after a reboot in some cases. Photos, downloads, and app data meant for the card get redirected to internal storage instead.
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.
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.
Schedule Reading Mode Automatically
Reading mode does not switch itself on unless you tell it when to run, so the display keeps its normal cool color balance even in the evening. Turning it on manually every night is easy to forget, which defeats the purpose of reducing blue light before bed. A schedule lets Reading mode start and stop on its own, either at fixed times or automatically around sunset.
Turn On/Off App Drawer
If every installed app sits directly on your Xiaomi home screens instead of in a separate overview, MIUI's app drawer setting is turned off. Switching between 'Classic' and 'With App drawer' changes whether a swipe on an empty area opens a full app list or just adds more home screen pages.
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.
Assign Alarm Functions to Volume Buttons
If your alarm keeps ringing because pressing a volume button does nothing, MIUI lets you change that behavior in the alarm settings. By default the phone treats both volume keys the same way, so you cannot assign a separate action to volume up and volume down. This single setting decides whether a button press snoozes, dismisses or ignores the alarm every single time.
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.