How to make a large keyboard for Android Xiaomi: full instructions

Increasing the size of the keyboard on Xiaomi smartphones is not just an aesthetic desire, but often a vital necessity for users with impaired vision or large finger motor skills. The standard settings of the MIUI and HyperOS shell allow you to flexibly manage the scale of the interface, but many device owners do not know exactly where the desired sliders are hiding. In this article, we will examine all the available methods, from simple system settings to advanced methods of editing system files.

Modern touchscreens are getting bigger, but the area allocated to the input area is sometimes disproportionately small, leading to frequent typos and discomfort during long-term correspondence. Keyboard scaling solves this problem by making buttons wider and higher, which greatly improves the speed of printing. We'll look at the settings for the standard Gboard keyboard, which is preset on most Redmi and Poco models.

Before we start to make changes, it's worth noting that the results may vary slightly depending on the version of the Android operating system. However, the basic principles remain the same for the entire ecosystem of the Chinese manufacturer. Be prepared that after you increase the font and buttons, part of the screen will be occupied by the input panel more aggressively than before.

System settings of font and display

The first and safest step to take before fine-tuning the keyboard itself is to change the global text display parameters in the system. On Xiaomi smartphones, font size directly affects the height of the word prediction bar and often the size of the buttons themselves in standard applications. Go to Settings → Screen → Text size.

So here you'll see a slider that moves around and changes the size of the letters in all the apps that you support, and it's important to understand that it's not just going to affect the keyboard, it's going to affect the menus, the messages, and the browser. If you're targeting huge buttons, this method might be too radical, because the whole interface is going to get bigger.

⚠️ Warning: Excessively increasing system fonts can cause text in some applications to stop fitting in designated fields, causing visual glitches or overlapping.

Additionally, the menu often features the option “Element Size” or “Scale” that controls the physical size of the icons and interface buttons, and the combination of maximum font and increased scale gives the most noticeable result for people with poor vision, making the entire system more readable.

Customize the height and size of the keys in Gboard

The main input tool on most devices is Google’s virtual keyboard, known as Gboard. It has built-in tools to change its geometry without having to install third-party software. To get to the desired menu, open any type of text application, click on the gear icon on the keyboard bar, or find the Settings app in the list of programs.

From the settings menu, select Settings → Preferences → Keyboard Height. Here you will be offered five height options, from Very Low to Very High. The Very High option will stretch the keyboard vertically as much as possible, occupying almost half the screen, which is ideal for large fingers.

• 📏 Keyboard height is the main parameter that determines the vertical size of the entire input panel.
• 🔤 Font size – a separate slider that allows you to enlarge the letters on the buttons themselves, regardless of their size.
• 🎨 Design themes – some themes can visually make buttons more massive due to frames and shadows.

Also, under Preferences, you can activate the full-screen keyboard stretch option (if available in your version), which removes the side indentations and makes the keyboard as wide as possible. The combination of maximum height and stretching width gives the best result for those who are looking for a way to make a large keyboard on Xiaomi Android.

Using one-handed mode to expand buttons

An interesting life hack that not everyone knows about is the use of one-handed input mode. Although originally designed to make it easy to use large Mi and Redmi Note smartphones with one hand, it effectively solves the problem of button size. When activated, the keyboard shrinks and shifts to the right or left, but the buttons inside the compressed area often become visually larger relative to the space occupied.

To activate this feature, look for an icon on the keyboard panel with a hand or arrow (usually to the left of the space or in the emoji menu) and click on it will turn the keyboard into a corner. For constant use in this mode, you can lock the position, which is especially true for models with a screen diagonal of more than 6.5 inches.

Some users specifically include this mode to increase the concentration on the center of the screen and avoid accidental pressing of the edges of the palm. However, it is worth remembering that in this mode you sacrifice the workspace, and the keyboard ceases to be “big” in the sense of the whole screen, becoming large only relative to its reduced area.

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For quick switching of input modes with one hand, press the “Coma” key for a long time or use a swipe on the space if assigned in the gesture settings.

Third-party keyboards with flexible settings

If the standard Gboard doesn’t meet your size requirements, the market offers alternatives with more advanced customization capabilities, with the Yandex or SwiftKey keyboards leading the way, allowing you to fine-tune the height, width and indentations between buttons in detail.

In the Microsoft SwiftKey app, you have to go to the settings, select the "Look" section, then the "Size" section, and you have a slider that allows you to change the height of the keyboard in 1% increments, which gives you a much more accurate setup than the standard 5 levels in Gboard. You can make the keyboard so huge that there's only room for two lines of text on the screen.

Another powerful tool is the Hacker's Keyboard or Thumb Keyboard, which were originally designed with large buttons or physical keyboard emulation, and allow you to change not only the size, but also the layout, adding additional rows of buttons that can also be scaled.

⚠️ Note: When installing third-party keyboards, Android will issue security alerts. This is standard procedure, as the keyboard has access to input data.

Increase through the Developer Menu

For advanced users who want to maximize their impact and are not afraid to experiment, there is a hidden developer menu that allows you to rescale the global interface, which will affect the keyboard, making it giant. To activate this menu, go to Settings. → About the phone and quickly press 7 times on the item "Version" MIUI» or "Version" OS».

Once activated, a new section will appear in the settings menu, "Additional" or "Extended settings", where you need to find "Developers" and we're interested in the "Smallest width" option, which is about 360-400 dp by default.

Reducing that number makes the system think the screen is smaller than it really is, and it automatically enlarges all interface elements, including the keyboard. Changing a value below 300 dp can make the interface unusable, so change the values smoothly, in 10-20 unit increments.

Frequent questions and scaling problems

When you enlarge your keyboard, you often face a number of common problems, such as when you upgrade your HyperOS system, some settings may be reset to factory values, and increasing the size of the buttons can cause the word prediction bar to override some of the text you type in some applications, such as Telegram or WhatsApp.

Another problem is the desynchronization of tactile response, where if you increase the virtual boundaries of the buttons, the vibration may not work where you expect, and in such cases, it is recommended that the keyboard settings turn off "Push Sound" and leave only the vibration, setting its duration to a minimum.

Remember that too large a keyboard reduces the useful screen area for viewing content, and when watching videos or web pages, this can be uncomfortable, so the best solution is to find a balance where the buttons are large enough to be easily hit, but do not overlap the entire view.

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The optimal size of the keyboard is a compromise between the ease of getting a finger and the amount of visible text on the screen.