How to Add Acceleration to Xiaomi’s Desktop: A Complete Guide to MIUI Optimization

The desktop on Xiaomi smartphones eventually begins to slow down: scroll lags, slow app openings, animations hanging over the table. The reasons are rooted in the features of the MIUI shell, which is littered with background processes, unnecessary widgets and unoptimized settings. But the problem is solvable — and does not always require resetting to factory settings or buying a new phone.

In this article, we will discuss 7 proven ways to speed up the desktop on any Xiaomi device (from Redmi Note 10 to Xiaomi 14 Ultra), including hidden ADB functions, fine-tuning the launcher and cleaning the system from “garbage”. All methods are tested on current versions of MIUI 14/15 and do not require root rights. Particular attention will be paid to disabling heavy animation through the engineering menu – this gives an increase in smoothness of up to 30% after the first step.

1. Brake Diagnostics: Why Xiaomi's desktop has become slow

Before optimizing, you need to understand the root of the problem. Xiaomi desktop performance is affected by:

• 📱 Overloaded Launcher: Too many widgets, live wallpaper or animated themes MIUI They eat up to 20% of the RAM.
• 🗑️ Cache and junk files: the system stores temporary application data, which over time take up gigabytes of memory.
• 🔄 Background activity: MIUI aggressively keeps apps in memory, even if they are not in use (especially relevant for Redmi with 4-6 GB of RAM).
• 🎨 Animations and transitions: beautiful but resource-intensive effects slow down the system response.
• 🔋 Trottling processor: when overheating or low battery charge Xiaomi artificially limits performance.

To identify a bottleneck, open Settings → About Phone → MIUI Version and click 5 times on the line with the version. This will open developer mode. Then go to Settings → Additional → For Developers and turn on the option Debugging on USB and Do not turn off the screen while charging. Now connect the phone to your PC and use the command:

adb shell dumpsys meminfo

In conclusion, pay attention to the strings TOTAL RAM and Available RAM. If the free memory is less than 15-20%, the system works at the limit - it's time to clean the background processes.

2. disable animations through the engineering menu (the most effective way)

Reducing animation time by 2 to 3 times gives you instant scroll and app opening speeds, a technique that works on all Xiaomi devices, including POCO and Black Shark, but requires developer mode activation.

Instructions:

1. Activate the Developer Mode (as described above).
2. Go to Settings → Additional → For developers.
3. Find the block Scope of animation and set for all three parameters the value Off. or 0.5x: Scope of animation windows Scope of animation transition Scope of animation duration of animation

Reboot the phone.

For advanced users: if you want to completely remove delays, use the ADB-team:

adb shell settings put global window_animation_scale 0


adb shell settings put global transition_animation_scale 0




adb shell settings put global animator_duration_scale 0

⚠️ Attention: Complete shutdown of animations (0x) It can make the interface less intuitive, for example, when you open an application, the screen will jump abruptly without a smooth transition — 0.5x.

3. MIUI launcher optimization: removing unnecessary widgets and settings

The standard MIUI launcher is one of the main resource eaters, and it constantly scans widgets, updates the weather, and synchronizes data to speed up its work:

• 🧹 Remove unnecessary widgets: Keep your finger on the widget → Delete. Especially slow widgets weather, calendar and Mi Fit.
• 📂 Turn off automatic app sorting: go to launcher settings (hold your finger on your desktop) → Settings) and disable Autosort.
• 🖼️ Replace the live wallpaper with static: Settings → Wallpaper. → Static. Live wallpaper consumes up to 10% CPU background.
• 🔍 Turn off desktop search: in the launcher settings, deactivate Desktop Search (saves up to 50MB of RAM).

For POCO Launcher or Nova Launcher users, these shells are lighter than standard MIUI but require manual configuration.

• Animation of applications (in animation settings)
• Show notifications about bad bad bad badges
• Automatic backup

💡

If the desktop still slows down after optimizing the launcher, try resetting it: Settings → Applications → Application Management → Launcher → Storage → Clear data. This will return the standard settings without losing user data.

System cleanup: cache, junk files and background processes

MIUI is known for actively cacheing data, but rarely cleaning it automatically, resulting in up to 1 to 3 GB of unnecessary files after 3 to 6 months of use, and cleaning up up up to 15 to 20 percent.

Cleaning methods:

• 🗑️ Built-in Security utility: Open the Security app (shield icon). Press Cleanup → Deep Clean. Select App Cache, Residual Files, and Large Files. Click Clear (may take 2-5 minutes).
• 🔄 Manually clean the cache for individual applications: Go to Settings → Annexes → App management. Select an app (like Facebook or Instagram). Click Storage → Clear the cache.

Removal of duplicate files

1. Use the Files by Google app (available in the Play Market).
2. Go to the Cleanup section → Duplicate files.
3. Select unnecessary copies and delete them.

For advanced users: If you want to clear the dalvik cache (Android cache), do it via TWRP or the command:

adb shell su -c "rm -r /data/dalvik-cache/*"

⚠️ Warning: Clearing dalvik cache requires root rights and can lead to temporary system instability. After cleaning, the phone will restart longer than usual (up to 5-10 minutes) - this is normal.

5. Background processes and autoboot settings

MIUI, by default, allows most applications to run in the background and autoboot when you start, which is convenient, but consumes up to 40% of RAM.

• 🚫 Background activity restriction: Go to Settings → Annexes → Application management. Select an application (e.g. TikTok or VKontakte). Press Battery → Limit background activity.
• 🔌 Disable Autoboot: In the same app management menu, select Autoboot. Disable the option for unnecessary apps (such as games or instant messengers you don't use daily).

Optimizing the battery

1. Go to Settings → Battery and Performance → Battery Optimization.
2. Select All apps and enable optimization for those that are not critical (e.g. AliExpress or Yandex.Maps).

For devices with 4GB of RAM or less (such as Redmi 9A or POCO M3), it is also recommended to disable System Window Animation and reduce the Background Process Limit to 2-3 in the developer settings.

6 Hidden MIUI functions for acceleration

Xiaomi hides a few useful options that can significantly speed up the system, which are not found in the standard settings – you will need ADB or secret combinations.

• 🔧 Shutdown MIUI Optimization (removes system checks): adb shell settings put global miui_optimization_disabled 1 Once you've completed the command, restart your phone. This option disables some functions. MIUI (Automatic thematication, but gives an increase in speed to 10%.