How to make Xiaomi smartphone smooth: from cleaning cache to hidden settings MIUI

Your Xiaomi is slowing down, apps are late, and animations are twitching? The problem is familiar to many MIUI smartphone users — even flagship models lose their speed after a year or two of use. The reasons may lie in overloaded memory, background software, outdated firmware or suboptimal system settings. Fortunately, in 90% of cases, the situation can be fixed without radical measures like resetting to factory settings.

In this article, we will discuss 7 The best ways to get your Redmi back, POCO or Xiaomi initial smoothness - from basic (cleaning the cache, disabling animations) to advanced (setting the kernel through ADB, change the I/O scheduler All instructions are relevant to MIUI 14/15 and adapted to models 2020–2026 We will focus on the hidden functions. MIUI, Even the official guides are silent about.

1.Diagnostics: Why Xiaomi is slowing down?

Before you start optimizing, it’s important to understand the root of the problem. The brakes on Xiaomi are usually due to one or more reasons:

• 📱 Overloaded memory: less than 1 GB of free space on the system partition or 10% of the total internal memory.
• 🔄 Background processes: Auto-run unnecessary apps, duplicate Google and Mi services.
• 🖥️ Outdated software: firmware older than 3 months or beta version with bugs.
• ⚙️ Suboptimal settings: included animations, high-resolution screen on weak chips, aggressive battery savings.
• 🔋 Degraded battery: when worn more than 30%, the system forcibly limits performance.

To identify a bottleneck, do a simple test:

1. Open Settings → About Phone → The MIUI version and tap 5 times on the inscription “Kerole” – the developer mode will turn on.
2. Go back to Settings → More → For developers and find the item Processor Statistics.
3. Run a resource-intensive application (such as a game) and watch the download schedule CPU/GPU. If the indicators are constantly at a maximum - the problem is in the "iron" or firmware.

⚠️ Note: If you see mediaservers with more than 20% download in CPU statistics, it's a sign of a damaged media cache. Solution: clear the data from the Media Storage application in the settings.

System cleanup: cache, debris and duplicates

The first step to smooth operation is to free up memory from unnecessary files. On Xiaomi, the cache accumulates in three places:

• 🗑️ Application cache: Temporary files that should be cleaned automatically but often remain.
• 📁 System cache: update data, log files and remnants of deleted programs.
• 🖼️ Cash multimedia: miniatures of photos / videos that the gallery generates.

How to clean:

1. App cache: Go to Settings → Apps → App management. Slip three dots in the top right corner → Size sort. Select apps with a cache >100 MB (e.g. YouTube, Facebook) and click Clear cache.

System cache

adb shell pm trim-caches 500M

This command will clear the cache of all applications except system ones through ADB, connect the phone to a PC with Platform Tools installed and run it in the terminal.

To automate the process, use the built-in Security application (shield icon):

1. Open Security → Cleaning → Deep Cleaning.
2. Check all items except Download (there may be important files).
3. Click Clean and wait until it's done. On models with MIUI 15, you've added the option "Memory Optimization - Turn it on."

3. MIUI Optimization: Hidden Performance Settings

MIUI hides a few key parameters that affect smoothness, and you can activate them through the developer menu or ADB.

Method 1: Disabling animations

UI animations eat up up to 15 percent of CPU resources on weak chips (like the Snapdragon 4xx or Helio Gxx) to remove them:

1. Activate the Developer Mode (see Section 1).
2. Go to For Developers → The scale of the animation window and install the animation disabled.
3. Repeat for the items Size of animation transition and Duration of animation.
4. Disable Duplicate Services: Install App Inspector from Google Play and find services called com.google and com.xiaomi that perform the same functions (e.g., contact synchronization). Disable the less-priority service via adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 name.packet.

For models with MIUI 14+, Settings → Battery → Performance Mode has been added. Choose High Performance if you want to sacrifice battery life for smoothness.

⚠️ Warning: Do not disable com.android.systemui or com.miui.home, which will lead to a crash of the interface. ADB Create a backup copy through Settings → Additionally. → Backup and reset.

5. Update of firmware and core

Outdated software is a common cause of brakes. Xiaomi regularly releases updates that fix performance bugs, but they don't always install automatically.

How to update correctly:

1. Through OTA: Go to Settings → About Phone → System Update. If an update is available, download it over Wi-Fi and install it. Don't interrupt the process - this can lead to a device blink.

Through Recovery.

• Download the full firmware package for your model from en.miui.com.
• Put the update.zip file in the root of the internal memory.
• Reboot to Recovery (clip Power + Volume up when the phone is off).
• Select Install update.zip and wait until it is completed.
• Fastboot (advanced method): fastboot flash all file name.img fastboot reboot This method is suitable for "brick" devices or when switching to custom firmware (for example, Pixel Experience).

💡

Updating the firmware through Fastboot completely rewrites the system partition, which helps to get rid of the “junk” of previous versions. However, this method erases all data – back up in advance!

Hardware restrictions: when iron does not pull

If all the software methods have been tried and the lags have remained, the problem may be the hardware.

• 🔋 Battery wear: with a capacity below 80% of the nominal system forcibly limits performance.
• 🔥 Trottling: overheating of the processor due to clogged thermal paste or damaged radiator.
• 💾 Degraded memory: After 3-5 years of use, flash memory loses read/write speed.

How to check:

1. Battery: Install AccuBattery and check for wear and tear in Health section. >20%, replace the battery (original modules for Xiaomi cost 1,500-3000) ₽).

Temperature.

• Use the CPU Monitor to monitor core temperature.
• If the temperature exceeds 70 ° C in plain – cleaning or replacement of the thermal paste is required.
• Memory performance: adb shell cat /proc/meminfo Note the MemFree line. If the free memory is less than 20% of the total capacity, this is a sign of a chip leakage or degradation.

If that doesn’t help, roll back to the previous firmware version via Fastboot.