Xiaomi smartphone owners often encounter intrusive pop-ups that overlap the desktop or appear while using apps. This does not always mean that the device is infected with a complex virus. Most often, the problem lies in the aggressive policy of monetizing the MIUI system itself or in the permissions that the user accidentally issued to legitimate but traffic-hungry programs.
To make matters worse, adware can be embedded in standard system utilities like Explorer, Music, or Cleanup. Ad code also often penetrates with free apps from third-party sources. Understanding the source of the problem is already half the success of your gadget’s clean screen fight.
In this guide, we will look at all possible ways to eliminate intrusive banners. We will look at both the standard system settings and methods for detecting hidden malware. Android provides enough tools to protect you if you know exactly where to look.
Analysis of the source of advertising traffic
Before we take radical action, we need to determine exactly what is generating pop-ups. Often users mistakenly blame the system services, when the culprit is a newly installed flashlight or photo editing app. Careful monitoring of smartphone behavior will help identify the culprit.
Pay attention to the moment the ads appear. If the banners only fly when a particular game or program is launched, the problem is localized. If the ads occur randomly on the desktop or when you unlock the screen, it can be a system level or a miner virus that masquerades as a system process.
- 🔍 Check notification history: often there is a trace of the application that tried to show the ad, even if you immediately closed it.
- 📱 Pay attention to the name of the process in the task manager at the time the window appears.
- 📉 Analyze traffic consumption: Advertising apps often consume more data in the background.
For more in-depth analysis, you can use built-in statistics. Go to Settings → Apps → All apps and sort a list by data usage or battery use. Suspicious low-weight but high-resource programs are often the carriers of advertising modules.
Disabling MIUI system advertising
Xiaomi is embedding advertising services deep into the MIUI shell to reduce the cost of its devices. Fortunately, most of these services can be legally disabled through settings without resorting to root rights. This is the first step that every owner needs to take.
The central control element is the MSA service (MIUI System Ads), which is responsible for delivering personalized advertising to system applications, and disabling this service significantly reduces the number of pop-ups, although it does not guarantee 100% of the result, since some applications have their own built-in mechanisms.
☑️ Settings for disabling advertising
It's also worth going through the settings of each standard app. Music, Themes, Explorer, and Security often have separate switches for recommendations and news. Personalized ads can be turned on by default, and you have to manually disable them in each section.
⚠️ Attention: When you try to disable msa, the system may ask you repeatedly about your decision or claim that you can't stop the process. 3-5 once in a row, until the countdown timer expires and the switch is fixed in the "Off" position».
Search and Remove Malware Applications
If disabling system settings didn’t help, a malicious application is likely to have settled on the device, often without a desktop icon and disguised as system processes with names like “System Service,” “Update,” or “Flash Player.”
Use a built-in security scanner to detect hidden threats or install a reliable antivirus from a well-known vendor, such as Dr.Web or Kaspersky. However, manual search through the application menu is often more effective, as it allows you to see programs that hide their icon.
- 🕵️♂️ Go to Settings. → Annexes → All applications and carefully scrolle through the entire list.
- 👻 Look for apps without an icon or with a transparent name (empty name).
- 🗑️ Remove any suspicious programs, especially those whose installation date coincides with the start of the advertisements.
What to do if the “Delete” button is inactive?
In this case, try to launch the smartphone in Safe Mode. To do this, press the turn off button, and when the reboot menu appears, press and hold the "Stop" option until the prompt appears to go to Safe Mode, in which only system applications are launched, which allows you to safely remove the pest.
Blocking advertising in the browser Chrome and Yandex
A common reason for pop-ups is not a virus in the system, but a subscription to site notifications in the browser. Users often accidentally allow sites to send notifications, after which the phone begins to flood with banner ads even when the browser is closed.
To fix the situation in Google Chrome, go to your browser settings, select Site Settings and then Notifications. Here you will see a list of all sites that have access to notifications. Ruthlessly delete or block any addresses you do not know.
The same action should be done in Yandex or any other browser you use. In Yandex, the path looks like this: Settings → Site settings → Notifications. It is also recommended to clear the browser's cache and cookies to remove the remnants of advertising scripts.
| browser | The Way to Notification Settings | Action. |
|---|---|---|
| Chrome | Settings → Site settings → Notifications | Remove all suspicious URLs |
| Yandex | Settings → Site settings → Notifications | Ban all websites |
| Opera | Settings → Privacy → Sites → Notifications | Clear the permit list |
| DuckDuckGo | Settings → Notifications | Clear All |
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Install an extension or use a browser with an ad blocker built in, such as Brave or Firefox with an uBlock Origin addon, which will solve 90% of the problems with advertising on the Internet.
After clearing the permission lists, it is recommended to completely close the browser through the running application manager and restart the device, this is guaranteed to stop any background processes associated with advertising scripts.
Using DNS to block at the network level
One of the most effective and elegant ways to remove ads on Android is to use a private DNS filtered, which requires no additional applications and works at the network connection level, blocking requests to known ad servers.
Starting with Android 9, the system has a built-in “Private” feature. DNS-You don't need root rights. You just need to write down the address of a special server that automatically filters out ad traffic. It works in all apps and browsers.
dns.adguard.comTo set up, go to Settings → Connection and Sharing → Private DNS (the path may vary slightly in different versions of MIUI). Select the DNS Provider Host Name mode and enter the address above. Once saved, the phone will reconnect to the network and the ads will start to be blocked.
⚠️ Attention: Please provide the address DNS Yeah, no protocol. http:// If you type in the wrong address, the Internet on your phone may stop working, so just put it back in Auto mode».
Radical measures: resetting and reflashing
If none of these methods worked and the ads continue to annoy, it may be that the device is infected with a deep virus that has penetrated the system partition, or the firmware has been modified by an unscrupulous seller (often found in versions of Global, cross-linked from China).
In this case, the only reliable solution is a full reset to factory settings (Hard Reset).Be sure to back up important data before that, as all information from the phone will be deleted. Go to Settings → About Phone → Settings Reset → Erase all data.
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A full reset removes all apps and settings, returning the phone to a store-like state, guaranteed to remove software viruses, but takes time to reconfigure the device.
In extreme cases, when even a reset doesn’t work (which is extremely rare), you need to flash the device through your computer using the Mi Flash Tool utility and official firmware from the developer’s website, a procedure that is more complicated and requires caution, but allows you to replace the system files with clean ones.