Owners of Xiaomi’s smartphones, which run the MIUI shell or the new HyperOS, often face the need to quickly save an image from the screen. Whether it’s an important message, an app error or just an interesting moment in the game, the ability to take screenshots is a basic skill. Standard methods, familiar to other devices, work here, but the Chinese manufacturer has added a lot of unique chips that greatly simplify life.
There are several proven ways to capture the current content of the display. You can create a screenshot with a combination of physical buttons, a special gesture, through a notification curtain or even a voice command. Every user will find a convenient option, whether it is using one hand or controlling without touching the screen. In this article, we will analyze all the options available in detail.
The variety of methods is due to the fact that the Android interface on Xiaomi devices is deeply modified. Some features can be hidden in the depth of settings or require activation. Understanding these nuances will allow you to work with the gadget as efficiently as possible without wasting time searching for the desired options in the menu.
Classical method: button combination
The most common and reliable way, which works on 99% of Android devices, is to press the keys simultaneously. On Xiaomi smartphones with or without a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, this bundle has remained unchanged for many years, and you need to press the Power button and Volume Down button at the same time.
It's important to press the keys briefly, literally for a split second. If you hold them too long, the system might think of it as a command to call the reset menu or emergency shutdown. After a successful action, you'll hear the characteristic snap of the camera shutter, and at the top of the screen a thumbnail of the image taken will appear.
⚠️ Note: on some older models or certain system settings, the combination may work differently. If the standard method does not work, check if the screen is locked by security locks.
For people with large palms or large smartphones, this may not be the most convenient method, as it requires both hands or complex finger acrobatics, but it is a hardware method that works even if the touch screen temporarily does not respond or freezes.
Gesture control: three fingers
One of the most convenient features of MIUI is to swipe screenshots, which allows you to take screenshots with one hand, which is especially true for today's large-format displays, and to activate this feature, you need to swipe three fingers from top to bottom in the center of the screen.
By default, this function can be disabled, so you need to activate it in the settings. The path to the desired menu is as follows: go to Settings → Additional settings → Screenshots. Here you should find the item "Three-finger screenshot" and move the switch to the active position. After that, the system will respond to the corresponding gesture.
The sensor sensitivity on modern Xiaomi models, such as the Redmi Note or the flagship Mi series, allows you to recognize even light touches. However, it is worth considering that in some applications, especially games or drawing programs, this gesture can conflict with the internal commands of the application itself, in which case the system may ignore your action.
☑️ Checking the setting of gestures
Using gestures makes it much faster to store information, so you don't have to look for physical buttons on the body, which reduces the risk of mechanical wear over time, and this is especially true for budget models where the resource of the buttons can be limited.
Use of notification curtain
If the physical buttons are busy or damaged and the gestures are not working, a software interface comes to the rescue. There's a special icon in the Xiaomi control center or notification curtain to create a screenshot that looks like a scissors or a dotted rectangle, depending on the version of MIUI.
To use this method, swipe from top to bottom to open the control panel. Find the Screenshot icon and click on it. The screen blinks and the image will be saved in the gallery. This is ideal when the phone is lying on the table or connected to the dock, and you don't want to pick it up.
You can edit the notification bar by adding frequently used tools. Click on the edit icon (usually a pencil or three dots in the corner of the curtain) and drag the screenshot icon into the active zone, which makes the feature available in one click, which is critical for operational work.
| Method | Speed. | Convenience | Reliability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buttons | Tall. | Average. | Maximum |
| Gesture (3 fingers) | Maximum | High. | Tall. |
| Curtain. | Medium | Low. | Tall. |
| Voice. | Low. | Average. | Depends on the network. |
Long screenshot: saving entire pages
Often, you need to save not just one frame, but a whole page of the site, correspondence in the messenger or document. To do this, Xiaomi has a feature called “Long screenshot” or “Scroll”; After you take a regular screenshot in any of the ways described above, a thumbnail will appear in the corner.
Click on this thumbnail to open the editor. At the bottom of the screen, you'll see a button with a down arrow or a Scrolling icon. When you click on it, you'll automatically scroll down, and the system will stitch the frames into one long picture, and you can stop the process at any time by touching the screen.
⚠️ Attention: Scrolling may not work properly on sites with lazy content loading (when images only appear when scrolling.
The maximum length of this image is limited by the system, but it's usually enough to save multiple screens of text, an indispensable tool for lawyers, students, and anyone who works with large amounts of visual information, and the file is saved in the same format as a regular screenshot.
Technical Limitations of Long Screenshots
Voice control and Assistant
Modern Xiaomi smartphones are equipped with powerful voice assistants. You can just say "OK, Google" or activate Xiao AI (in Chinese versions) and say "Take a screenshot." The phone recognizes voice, performs the action and saves the image.
This is especially useful in situations where your hands are busy or dirty, like you're cooking with a prescription on your phone and you want to save the step of the instruction, but you're afraid of getting your screen dirty, and voice control solves this problem elegantly and quickly.
This feature requires that the microphone is active and that Google or Mi Assistant services have the appropriate permissions, and a stable Internet connection is required to handle voice requests if cloud-based speech recognition is used.
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Use voice commands in conjunction with smart speakers or headphones to take screenshots without touching the phone at all.
Editing and markup immediately after creation
Once you've created a screenshot, Xiaomi offers advanced editing capabilities, so you don't have to open a gallery and search for a file. In the preview, you have tools for cropping, drawing, adding text and stickers, so you can immediately highlight the main thing and send information to the interlocutor.
The embedded editor allows sensitive data, such as card numbers or addresses, to be blurred, which increases digital security. You can use a marker, eraser or finished shapes. All changes apply to the copy, the original remains unchanged in the gallery unless you choose to save on top.
And you can also send a file to a messenger, save it in notes, or recognize text (OCR) from the edit menu, and text recognition works remarkably accurately, converting the image into an editable format, making the smartphone a powerful tool for working with documents.
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The built-in screenshot editor in MIUI/HyperOS is more functional than many individual apps from Google Play, allowing you to perform 90% of tasks without installing excessive software.
Frequent questions and problem-solving
Despite the simplicity of the process, users sometimes face difficulties, screenshots may not be created in certain applications for security reasons (banks, incognito mode), sensor malfunctions or memory overflows, which blocks the creation of new files.
If screenshots are no longer being created, try restarting the device, often solving temporary software conflicts, and also check for free storage space, as when it is not enough, the system can block the recording of new data.