Xiaomi smartphone users often face a situation where advertising offers with beautiful landscapes suddenly appear on the lock screen or in the notification curtain. These are not just pictures, but an active service that consumes traffic and distracts from work. MIUI and HyperOS are built to promote their services as aggressively as possible, and Wallpaper Carousel is one of the main marketing tools.
Owners of Redmi and Poco devices notice that even after initial setup, the phone will start offering subscriptions or news after a while, because a standard shutdown doesn’t always deactivate all related processes completely, and you need to perform a comprehensive setup cleanup to get rid of this visual noise forever.
In this article, we will not only look at the standard shutdown path, but also the hidden settings that are responsible for personalization and data collection, learn how to distinguish between system wallpaper and advertising service, and learn how to prevent them from being activated again after firmware updates.
What is a wallpaper carousel and why does it appear
Known as Wallpaper Carousel (or Glance on global firmware), the feature is a service that automatically changes an image on a locked screen. Originally conceived as an aesthetic addition, it has evolved into a content delivery platform. Unlike conventional live wallpaper, it requires a constant internet connection to upload new images.
The main reason users want to remove wallpaper carousel notifications on Xiaomi is because of the intrusiveness that the service often offers “premium” themes, news feed articles or discounts in app stores. Even if you don’t open banner ads, the mere fact that they appear in the status bar annoys many smartphone owners.
It's important to understand that this component is deeply integrated into the MIUI shell. It's not a third-party application that can be simply removed through the controller. It's a system service that works at the level of the screen locker. So just ignoring notifications doesn't solve the problem, you need to change the configuration of the system.
⚠️ Warning: Disabling system components completely may affect the widgets on the lock screen.Be sure before making changes that you do not need pedometer widgets or weather on the locked screen.
Xiaomi developers periodically change menu item names to make it difficult for users to easily find and disable ads. What was called "Carousel" yesterday may now be called "Widget Ribbon" or "Glance." Understanding the essence of the process is more important than remembering a particular path in the menu.
Basic disconnection through lock screen settings
The easiest and most obvious way to remove the wallpaper carousel on Xiaomi is to use the standard settings menu, which is suitable for most cases when the service was activated accidentally or returned after a system update.
To start, you need to go to your device's Settings section, find the look and lock item, depending on the version of MIUI, it can be called Lock Screen or Always Screen and Lock, and that's where the switch that activates the image change is hidden.
Find a line called "Wallpaper Carousel" or "Glance." Inside this menu is usually a "Enable Wallpaper Carousel" switch, put it in an inactive position, and the system may try to keep you from "only beautiful pictures without ads" -- don't buy it, shut it off completely.
- 📱 Open Settings and go to the section "Block screen».
- 🔄 Find the wallpaper carousel (or Glance) and click on it.
- ❌ Turn the switch to the "off" position».
- ✅ Confirm the action if a pop-up with a question appears.
Once you do this, the images will stop changing and then the static image you chose will appear, but in some cases, the service may continue to run in the background, consuming resources.
☑️ Checking the carousel shutdown
Disconnection through the “Themes” app
If the standard path didn't work or the menu item didn't work, you should check the settings of the built-in Themes app, which is often the hidden activation of subscription and carousel services, and this is true for devices that are not bought at official retail or with a re-flashed system.
Run the Themes app on your Xiaomi smartphone. In the lower right corner or in the side menu, find the profile icon (humans). By clicking on it, you will be taken to account and service settings. You need to be careful here, since items can be scattered across different tabs.
Find the Settings section inside your profile, and you're interested in "Wallpaper Carousel" or "Advanced settings," and you can activate the "Receive recommendations" or "Automatic subscription" option, and disabling those points breaks the phone's connection to the image update server.
⚠️ Note: In some versions of the firmware, turning off the carousel in the screen settings does not turn it off in the Themes app.
Also in the Themes app, check the Subscription section, and if a trial subscription to premium content is active, it can automatically reactivate the carousel after the trial period ends, and cancelling the subscription is an important step to clean up completely.
What to do if the menu item "Carousel" is missing?
Cleaning data and resetting service settings
There are times when a software failure prevents you from turning off a function, or it turns on itself, and then the effective measure is to force the data of the services responsible for the blocker to be cleaned, and this will not delete your personal photos, but reset the settings of the system applications.
You will need to go to the Settings menu. → Annexes → All applications. You'll want to find system services on the list. You'll want to look for apps called wallpaper carousel, glance, mi services, wallpaper.
Once you select the desired application, click on “Clean” and select “Clean All” (or “Reset Settings”). This action will return the component to factory settings, and active subscriptions or autoboot settings will be canceled.
| Title of the process | Where to find out. | Action. | The result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallpaper carousel | Settings → Applications | Clear everything. | Resetting background change settings |
| Topics (Themes) | Settings → Applications | Clear the cache | Deletion of temporary advertising files |
| System blocker | Settings → Lock screen | Resetting settings | Return to the standard view |
| Mi Services | Settings → Applications | Limit background activity | Reducing the intrusiveness of services |
This procedure is especially useful if you notice that the phone has started to brake or the battery is discharged faster due to the constant loading of graphics.Data cleaning frees up space in memory and removes "junk" files.
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Cleaning up system applications’ data is a radical, but often the only way to fix software errors when conventional switches don’t work.
Blocking Advertising in MIUI Personalization
The root of the problem often lies deeper in Xiaomi’s overall advertising system. Even after removing the carousel, you can see recommendations elsewhere. To prevent Carousel from returning through updates, it is recommended to disable the personalization system.
Go to Settings → Passwords & Security → Access to Personal Data (or “System Services” in newer versions) and find a list of all the processes that have access to your data for targeted advertising, and find the list of “msa” (MIUI System Ads) and “Mi Video”, “Mi Browser”.
Turn off the switchboard in front of msa. The system will ask you three times to warn you of possible errors, and even start a countdown timer of 10 seconds. It's a psychological trick so you don't turn off the ads. You just have to wait for the timer to end and hit "Cancel."
- 🔒 Go to the settings "Passwords and security».
- 📉 Find the item "Access to personal data" or "System services».
- 🚫 Disable the msa service by confirming the withdrawal of consent.
- ⏳ Wait for the end of the waiting timer (10 seconds).
Disabling the msa service not only removes the carousel, but also significantly reduces the number of banner ads in standard Xiaomi applications.
Hidden settings via engineering menu and ADB
For advanced users who want to be 100% sure that the service will not start again, there are methods of disabling through debugging over USB. Using ADB commands allows you to deactivate the carousel package at the system level, making it impossible to run.
To do this, you need to turn on the developer mode (7 times click on the build number in About Phone) and activate USB Debugging. By connecting the phone to your computer, you can send a command to freeze the component. This is a safe procedure if you follow the instructions.
adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.miui.mishare.connectivityHowever, for wallpaper carousels, the package is often called differently, such as com.miui.personalization or com.android.thememanager. Be careful: disabling the theme may result in you not being able to change the standard wallpaper.
⚠️ Attention: Use ADB-Disabling the wrong system package can cause a cyclical reboot of the phone. If you're not sure about the name of the package, you'd better limit yourself to software methods.
An alternative to ADB is to use special deactivator apps from the Play Market, such as Universal Android Debloater, which provides a user-friendly interface to disable Xiaomi system components without manually typing commands.
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Before using ADB, make sure to make a complete backup of the data to the computer. Disabling system components is an interference with the operation of the OS, which should be reversible.