What is the bracket on the screen Xiaomi: decryption icons

Users of Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphones often encounter unexpected interface elements that appear in the status bar. One of the most common questions is the appearance of a mysterious bracket or semicircle in the upper corner of the display, which can be black, color or even flashing, causing bewilderment among gadget owners.

In most cases, you shouldn't panic, because this indicator doesn't signal a critical screen breakdown or a virus attack. Chances are you just activated one of the useful features of the MIUI or HyperOS shell, which is designed to make it easier to control the device.

In this article, we will take a closer look at all the possible options for these icons, how to distinguish one-handed control mode from the availability indicator, and why on older models it may just be an artifact of display.

Main reason: One-handed control mode

The most likely reason for the brace or semicircle at the bottom of the screen is the activated one-handed control mode, a feature specially designed by Xiaomi engineers to make it easier to use large smartphones, and when this mode is turned on, the active area of the display shrinks and shifts to the corner, allowing you to reach all the interface elements with your thumb.

Visually, this looks like dimming a part of the screen and showing a characteristic bracket or a smaller copy of the interface, and users often activate this feature by swiping down the lower horizontal navigation bar or quickly pressing the Home button three times.

To exit this mode and return the screen to its original state, you just need to touch the arrow that appears next to the bracket, or just press the Home button. If the icon is left hanging in the status bar as a small semicircle, this means that the function is on in the background and ready to activate by gesture.

To completely disable, you need to go to the system settings. Find the Additional settings section, then select Control with one hand and move the switch to the "Switched off" position. This action is guaranteed to remove the icon.

Special Opportunity Indicators (Accessibility)

The second common reason for the appearance of brackets, circles or people’s icons is the work of special services. The Android operating system on which MIUI is built, has a powerful toolkit for people with disabilities, but these functions are also used by ordinary users to automate tasks.

Often, a brace or a person icon in a circle indicates that TalkBack or Item Selection is working, and if you accidentally turn on one of these options, the phone may react differently to touch, either by voice action or by requiring double tap to confirm, which can make it very difficult to control the device.

⚠️ Warning: If your phone starts to "talk" every time you touch it and it becomes impossible to control it in the usual way, don't panic. 3-5 Seconds to forcefully disable voice accompaniment.

You can check the status of these features in the Settings menu → Advanced Settings → Special Features. This shows a list of all active services. If you see Element Selection or Special Features Menu activated, turn them off to remove unnecessary characters from the screen.

Sometimes users install launcher applications or screen recording utilities that add overlays, and they can also draw different frames and brackets over the interface to indicate the workspace.

Notification and status badges in MIUI

The MIUI shell and the new HyperOS are famous for their redesigned status bar interface, which can show various icons that the user can take for parentheses, for example, the traffic saving indicator looks like an up-and-down arrow with a limiter, which, when viewed briefly, resembles a bracket.

Also worth paying attention to is the Do Not Disturb Mode (month) or alarm clock icon. Depending on the theme you have set, these standard icons may look out of the box and resemble geometric shapes. Check the themes installed in the Themes app.

• 🌙 Sleep mode: activated on schedule and changes the color gamut of the screen.
• 📶 Traffic Limiter: Appears when mobile data limits are reached.
• 🔋 Energy savings: Battery icon with a leaf that may look like a bow.

If you can't identify the icon, try pinching your finger on the status bar (if the theme allows) or lowering the notification curtain completely. Often there's a text explanation to the active indicator. In some versions of the firmware, a long tap on the icon in the curtain leads directly to the settings of this feature.

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To quickly find out what any icon means, try to take a screenshot of the screen and open it in Google Lens or Yandex.Pictures - the neural network recognizes the icon and tells its name.

Artifacts of the matrix and broken pixels

Hardware problems can’t be ruled out, too. If the bracket on Xiaomi’s screen doesn’t look like a clear interface icon, but like a blurred spot, a colored stripe, or a distortion of the image, it could be a matrix defect. AMOLED-screens used in flagship models.

So-called "broken pixels," or a group of broken pixels, can form lines or arcs, and if you see a static bracket that doesn't disappear when you reboot your phone, and you can see it even in the BIOS menu, it's not about the software settings.

You can check the integrity of the display using a special test. In the Service and Feedback app (or Diagnostics in older versions), select a screen check. The device will start to run colors, and you can see if there is physical damage.

If the diagnosis revealed a hardware problem, and the phone is under warranty, you should immediately contact an authorized center. Mechanical damage (cracks, blows) is usually not covered by the warranty, but the production defect is covered.

Impact of established themes and launchers

Customization is one of Xiaomi’s strengths, but installing third-party themes from the GetThemes store or using alternative launchers (e.g. Nova Launcher, Microsoft Launcher) can cause system icons to display incorrectly.

Some themes contain errors in graphic elements, and as a result, a standard Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or signal level icon can appear as a strange bracket or square, because the theme files lack the desired pattern, and the system substitutes a stub.

To test this theory, you just need to temporarily switch to a standard theme of "Classic" or "Default", and if the bracket is missing, then the problem is the visual design, in which case you should look for an update for the theme or choose another one.

Also be careful with launchers, which require wide permissions to draw on top of other windows, and can add their own widgets or frames that the user perceives as system elements.

Hidden Developer Settings and Debugging

For advanced users who include developer mode, strange icons are commonplace. There are many options on the developer menu for debugging the interface that can display additional information on the screen.

For example, the Show taps option on the screen draws a white circle at the pressing point, but with certain sensitivity settings, it can look like an artifact. The Show layout bounds option frames each interface element into colored frames, creating a sense of chaos on the screen.

adb shell settings put global show_layout_bounds 1

This command, executed through ADB, will force the display of window boundaries. If you don't know what these are, you better not experiment with console commands. You can turn these functions off from the Developer menu by looking for the "Drawing" or "Visualization" section.

⚠️ Warning: Be careful in the Developer menu. Change the scaling options (DPI) or minimum width can make the interface unreadable, requiring a reset of the phone settings.

If you accidentally change DPI (pixel density), icons can become huge or, conversely, tiny, and text can go beyond the buttons, forming strange visual shapes. Return the DPI value to factory (usually 360-400 dpi for smartphones) to fix the situation.

How to remove the icon: step-by-step instructions

If you've determined that the bracket is a software glitch or a randomly enabled feature, it can be removed. The easiest and safest way is to reboot. It clears RAM and resets temporary rendering errors of the interface.

If the reboot does not help, follow the following steps:

• 📱 Check the curtain: lower the notification bar and look for active switches that burn in blue.
• 🎨 Change the subject: return the standard design in the app "Themes".
• 🧹 Clear the cache: go to Settings → Annexes → All applications, find the System Interface (System) UI) and press "Clear the cache".

As a last resort, if the icon is in the way and nothing helps, you can reset all settings to factory. Importantly, before you do this, make sure to back up all important data (photos, contacts, correspondence), as it will be deleted.

To reset, go to Settings → About Phone → Settings Reset → Erase all data. This will return the phone to a “out of the box” state, guaranteed to remove any software artifacts.

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In 95% of cases, the bracket on the Xiaomi screen is either a one-handed mode or a design theme bug, and is solved by simply rebooting or changing the theme.

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions