Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphone owners often want to personalize their device by making it as easy as possible for daily use. One of the most popular requests is the ability to quickly access their favorite photos without having to open a gallery and search for the right file among thousands of others. Creating a special shortcut or widget allows you to instantly see expensive memory or simply decorate the screen with relevant images. This is especially true for those who use the phone as a digital photo frame or need quick access to a particular album.
The MIUI operating system and its modern version of HyperOS provide several different tools to accomplish this task, each with its own characteristics. The user can choose between standard gallery widgets, specific album shortcuts or more advanced widgets from third-party applications such as Google Photos. Understanding the differences between these methods will help avoid confusion and choose the best option for your use case.
In this guide, we will take a look at all the available ways to display photos on the home screen. We will look at the standard shell tools, work with widgets of different sizes and the nuances of display customization. Regardless of which version of the firmware is installed on your device, you will find a working method for implementing it.
Use of the standard gallery widget
The easiest and most common way to place an image on the desktop is to use the built-in system gallery widget.This method does not require additional software installation and works consistently on all versions of the MIUI shell. However, it is worth considering that the functionality of the standard widget can vary depending on the version of the android and regional firmware.
To start, you need to go to desktop editing mode. To do this, make a long tap (press) over the empty area of the screen or use a two-finger pinch to zoom in. In the menu that opens, select Widgets, which is usually located at the bottom of the interface or in the sidebar. The system will offer a list of all available components, from system utilities to installed applications.
In the widget list, find the Gallery app icon. Click on it to reveal the sizes and display types available. The standard shell offers several formats: square thumbnails, rectangular blocks for multiple photos, and large single images. Choose the size that best fits your desktop design concept.
☑️ Checking before installing the widget
Once you drag and drop the widget onto the screen, the system automatically prompts you to select the source of the image. You can specify a specific album, such as Favorites or Camera, or allow the widget to display random photos from the entire library. If you want the screen to always have the same static image, make sure that the selected album contains only one file, or use the fixing method if it is available in your version of the software.
⚠️ Note: When selecting the "Random Photos" option, the desktop image will change every time you update the widget or reboot the device. If you need to capture a particular frame, this mode can be uncomfortable.
Creating a label for a specific album
If your goal is not just a decorative element, but quick access to a specific folder with images, it makes sense to create a direct label for the album, which creates an icon that, when you click on it, opens immediately on the desired page, avoiding long searches, which saves time, especially if you often take screenshots or save documents in a separate folder.
Unlike widgets, album shortcuts are created through the settings of the Gallery app itself or through the widget menu, but with a different logic: Open the Gallery app and go to the Album tab, and you can see all the folders, including the system folders and those you created, and find the folder you want to make easier to access.
Click on three dots in the top right corner of the screen or pinch your finger on the icon of the desired album. In the context menu that appears, look for Create a shortcut or Add to the desktop. Once the action is confirmed, an icon will appear on the home screen that visually resembles a folder with photos, but leads strictly to the selected section.
What if there is no “Create a label” item?
It's important to understand the difference between an app shortcut and a content shortcut. The app shortcut just opens the gallery, and the album shortcut is a deep link to a particular path in the file system, which makes navigating media files much more structured and user-friendly when you're working with large amounts of graphics.
Setting up Google Photos widgets
Many Xiaomi users prefer to use Google Photos cloud service instead of the standard gallery because of its powerful search algorithms and unlimited (compressed format) storage. For these users, there is a separate set of widgets that are often more functional than standard ones, which allow you to display photos from the cloud, even if they are removed from the internal memory of the phone.
The installation process is similar to system components, but the data source will be different. Go to the desktop widget menu and find the Photo app (flower icon) on the list. Inside, you'll find several design options, from simple icons to complex collages. Particularly noteworthy is the Tips or Favorites widget, which can pull up smart selections from Google.
One of the unique features of Google Photos widgets is the ability to choose the display style, so you can customize the widget to show only certain people's photos (face recognition) or photos taken on a particular day last year ("On this day"), which makes the desktop dynamic and emotionally colored.
| Type of widget | Photo source | Possibility of adjustment | Demands the Internet. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gallery (System) | Phone memory | Basic (Album/All) | No. |
| Google Photo | Cloud + Memory | High (People, Dates) | Preferably. |
| Slideshow wallpaper | Special folder | Medium (Interval) | No. |
| Third-party framework | Any source | Maximum | Depends on the app. |
When using Google Photos widgets, keep in mind traffic consumption. If you have limited mobile Internet, the widget can consume traffic to download previews of new photos in high resolution. It is recommended that you configure sync only over Wi-Fi in the settings of the application itself.
Function "Live wallpaper" and slideshow
Alternatives to static widgets can be to install slideshows as live wallpapers or use specialized themes. The MIUI shell has a built-in feature that allows you to change wallpapers on a schedule or when you turn on the screen. Although this is not quite a "shortcut" in the classical sense, the visual effect is similar - the constant presence of new images.
To activate this feature, go to Settings → Wallpaper. Here, select the category Online Wallpaper or Local if you want to use your photos. Wallpaper settings often include a wallpaper carousel (or Glance/Lock screen magazine) switch that allows you to scroll through a set of images on the lock screen and sometimes on the desktop.
For more advanced management, you can use the Themes app, which includes live wallpaper categories where animated images respond to touch or gyroscopes, but these solutions are more battery-consuming, which is an important factor for smartphone owners with less than the capacity of batteries.
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Use the wallpaper carousel feature only on Wi-Fi to avoid consuming mobile traffic, and turn it off in power saving mode to extend the device's life.
If you want a slideshow to work as a widget, not as a background, there are photo apps from GetApps or Play Market that create a transparent layer on top of the desktop that scrolls through your chosen photos, giving you maximum control over frame rate and album sources.
Display problems and their solution
Despite the ease of customization, users sometimes find widgets stop updating, display a black square, or disappear after a reboot, most often due to aggressive battery optimization, which is typical of Xiaomi.
To fix this, add the Gallery app (or Google Photos) to exceptions. Go to Settings → Apps → All apps. Find the right app, click Energy Saving and select No Limits mode. This will prevent the system from "sleeping down" the widget update process.
Another common problem is a lack of RAM: If a device has a lot of heavy applications, the widget may not have time to load the image, in which case it helps to clear the memory or reduce the size of the widget, and also check if the file of the original photo is moved to a hidden folder or archive, from which the widget can not read it.
⚠️ Note: If the widget shows a file not found error, check if the original image has been deleted. Widgets store a link to the file, not a copy of it, so deleting the original image will cause the image to disappear from the desktop.
Use of third-party widgets and launchers
For those who don't have standard MIUI capabilities, there are third-party launchers like Nova Launcher or Microsoft Launcher that provide advanced customization capabilities, allowing you to create widgets of any shape, transparency, and logic, a choice for advanced users who want to create a unique interface.
Third-party photo frame widgets, such as Photo Widget or Simple Photo Frame, offer features not available in the drain: overlaying filters, adding frames, displaying date and time over the photo, and synchronizing with cloud services like Dropbox or OneDrive.
When using third-party launchers on Xiaomi, you need to give the application special permissions. The system will constantly ask for confirmation to change system settings or display on top of other windows. You will need to go to Settings → Advanced Settings → Access to special features and allow the launcher to work, otherwise the animations and widgets may not work properly.
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Third-party launchers give you maximum freedom of registration, but can consume more battery resources and require complex initial permissions setup in MIUI.
In addition, some widgets require access to the All Files repository, not just media. In modern Android versions, this requires manual confirmation in the system dialogue. Be careful when granting such rights, although for gallery widgets this is a necessity for proper operation.