How to Make Full Screen Videos on Xiaomi Phone

Xiaomi’s modern smartphones are equipped with great displays, but when viewing video content, users often encounter unwanted black bars at the edges of the image. This is due to differences in the aspect ratio between the footage and the physical parameters of the screen of your device. Owners of models with elongated displays, such as the Redmi Note or the flagship Mi series, especially often notice this problem when watching old films or commercials shot in the classic 16:9 format.

Fortunately, MIUI and HyperOS provide a wide range of tools to manage multimedia display. Picture scaling can be done with both the regular built-in video player and third-party applications or system settings. Understanding how these tools work will allow you to enjoy content without compromise on quality or convenience.

In this article, we will take a look at all the available methods of stretching video, point out the subtleties of setting up codecs and explain why some files do not want to occupy the entire area of the matrix. You do not need to be a technician to change these parameters in a couple of minutes right in the interface of the smartphone.

Causes of Black Fields in Reproduction

The main reason for the empty areas at the edges of the screen is the discrepancy between the aspect ratio of the video stream and the physical resolution of the matrix of the smartphone. Most modern Xiaomi phones have elongated screens with a proportion of 20:9 or 19.5:9, while standard television and many videos on the Internet are still shot in 16:9. Player automatically adds black stripes (letterboxing) to preserve the original proportions of the frame and not distort the geometry of objects.

The second important factor is the software limitations of the video player itself: the standard MI Player application is set by default to preserve the original image quality, ignoring the free space of the display. Hardware acceleration can also affect rendering if the display drivers misinterpret the file metadata.

⚠️ Attention: Forced stretching of the video can lead to distortion of the geometry of the frame, which will cause round objects to become oval, and the faces of the actors - unnaturally elongated.

There is also a problem with content that has a variable aspect ratio, for example, in some films, directorial scenes can change format on the fly. In such cases, automatic adjustment often fails, requiring manual user intervention to correctly display.

Setup of the built-in player MI Player

The MIUI video shell app has hidden potential that many users overlook. To access zoom features, you need to launch a video file and tap the center of the screen to call the control panel. The bottom right corner usually has a three-dot or gear icon that opens the menu of additional options.

In the menu that opens, you'll find the item that controls the proportions of the image, and depending on the firmware version, it might be called "Enhancement," "Scale," or "Aspect Ratio." By switching the available modes, you can choose "Scale by screen" or "Fill," which will cause the player to ignore the black fields and stretch the picture to the entire available area.

Not all file formats support software stretching without loss of performance. Heavy files in the HEVC or H.265 high resolution codec can start to slow down when actively scaling, as the processor has to do the extra work of interpolating pixels in real time.

💡

If the built-in player doesn’t have an explicit size change button, try double tap on the screen during playback – in some versions of MIUI this switches zoom modes.

Use of third-party video players

If Xiaomi’s standard tools don’t work, the best solution is to install a dedicated app from the Google Play Store, led by VLC for Android and MX Player, which provide advanced zoom algorithms and support for a huge number of codecs without the need to install additional libraries.

In the VLC application, size management is done via the “More” menu (three dots) and the “Size” option, where stretch mode is available, which ignores the original proportions and fills the entire screen. Hardware decoding in these applications often works more efficiently than in stock solutions, providing smoothness even on budget models of smartphones.

• 🎬 VLC For Android: completely free, has no advertising, supports one-click stretching and has flexible audio path settings.
• ▶️ MX Player: famous for the best subtitle rendering engine and convenient gestures for controlling zoom and frame position.
• 🎥 NPlayer: offers professional color correction tools and fine-tuning aspect ratios for each file separately.

The advantage of third-party players is that they are independent of the system limitations of Android, they can force the resolution of the output frame, forcing the display Xiaomi display to display the picture exactly as the user wants, rather than as stipulated by the standard video file.

System settings of the screen and full screen mode

Modern versions of HyperOS and MIUI 14 have introduced a forced full-screen display feature for applications that are not optimized for extended screens, which is located in Settings → Screen → Full-screen mode. Although it is primarily designed for games and older applications, it can affect the behavior of some video players.

Activation of this feature causes the system to ignore the camera cutouts (called “bangs”) and touch zones, distributing the image throughout the useful area of the matrix, especially for owners of the Redmi Note and Poco series models, where the cutout of the front camera can overlap part of the useful image when watching video in horizontal orientation.

It is important to understand that system stretching can cause the player interface elements (pause buttons, volume) to move outside the visible zone or merge with the edges of the screen. In such cases, it is recommended to use external control buttons or a headset.

Solving problems with codecs and formats

Sometimes the problem is not the settings of the screen, but the file itself. If the video is shot in a rare format or has a non-standard bitrate, the built-in Xiaomi decoder may not correctly determine the frame boundaries, in which case it helps to convert a file on the computer or use a player with its own codecs, which are discussed above.

It’s also worth checking the hardware acceleration settings in the app itself. Some players have the option of switching between hardware (HW) and software (SW) decoding. The software method often does a better job of handling non-standard resolutions, as it takes over the processor rather than the video chip that’s sharpened to standards.

⚠️ Note: When switching to software decoding (SW) significantly increases energy consumption, which can lead to rapid discharge of the battery and heating of the smartphone body.

For advanced users, it is possible to change the system files of the display configuration via ADB, but this requires the presence of Root rights and carries the risk of violation of the warranty.

Features of viewing in online services

When you view content through a browser or apps like YouTube, Netflix or Kinopoisk, the scalability is limited to the service itself. These platforms stream the video stream in a strictly defined resolution, and the client application only displays it. Here, the full-screen button usually just unfolds the player, but does not change the proportions of the picture.

In mobile browsers like Chrome or the built-in MI Browser, you can try turning on the PC version mode.This will make the site think you're at your computer, and sometimes allows you to manage the size of the player window more flexibly, although on a small phone screen this can be inconvenient.

• 🌐 Browser mode: allows you to use extensions to resize videos if the browser supports them.
• 📱 Screen orientation: Make sure the turn sensor is working correctly, sometimes the orientation lock interferes with proper scaling.
• 🚫 Adblockers: can conflict with scripts of video players, disrupting their normal display on the full screen.

For streaming services, the best solution is to use their official applications, which are optimized for Android screens and automatically adjust the quality and size of the stream to the capabilities of your connection and display.

💡

For online video, Xiaomi’s screen system settings have less priority than the compression and scaling algorithms of the video service itself.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)