How to Remove the buttons from the Xiaomi screen: from gestures to concealing the navigation bar

Virtual navigation buttons on Xiaomi’s screen take up precious space, especially on devices with a small diagonal or non-standard aspect ratio. Even on flagships like Xiaomi 13 Ultra or Redmi Note 12 Pro+, the bottom bar with the Back, Home and Recent buttons can be annoying – it eats up up to 10% of the screen’s useful area, interferes with watching videos or games. Fortunately, MIUI offers several ways to hide or replace these elements, but not all of them are obvious to the user.

Many people mistakenly believe that you can remove buttons only through gesture settings. In fact, there are 5 different methods, from standard firmware functions to hidden instructions for developers. However, on some models (for example, POCO F5 or Black Shark 5), the algorithm differs because of custom shells. In this article, we will analyze each method with the versions of MIUI 12-14, and also tell you how to return the buttons back if something goes wrong.

It's important to understand that hiding buttons doesn't always mean removing them completely. Most of the time, they just become transparent or replaced with gestures, but remain active in the background. This affects usability - for example, in a hidden panel, accidentally touching the bottom of the screen can cause unwanted actions. So check before setting up whether your model supports full-screen gestures (the list of compatible devices is below).

1. Standard method: Enabling full-screen gestures

The most obvious and safe method is to activate navigation gestures that replace virtual buttons, which works on all devices running MIUI 10 and later, including Redmi, POCO and Black Shark. The main advantage is that root access or third-party applications are not required.

To enable gestures:

1. Open the Settings → Display.
2. Select Full-screen mode (on some firmware - Navigation type).
3. Activate the option of MIUI Gestures or Full-screen gestures.
4. Follow the on-screen prompts to adjust sensitivity and trigger zones.

After activation, virtual buttons will disappear and management will be carried out by swipes:

• 🔙 Back - swipe from right to left from the edge of the screen.
• 🏠 Home - swipe up from the bottom edge.
• 📄 Recent - swipe up with pause or diagonal swipe to the right.

In the models with AMOLED-screens (e.g. Xiaomi) 12T Pro gestures are smoother due to the high frequency of the sensor survey (up to 240 Hz). 10A There may be delays - in this case, the calibration of gestures will help (more about this below).

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If after the inclusion of gestures, the screen has become less responsive to touching at the edges, increase the sensitivity in the settings Additional parameters → Sensitivity of edges.

2. Hiding the navigation bar through the developer settings

For power users, there's a more flexible way to disable the navigation bar through the developer menu, which doesn't remove the buttons completely, but makes them transparent, freeing up space on the screen. It works on all versions of MIUI, but requires developer mode pre-activation.

Step instructions:

1. Activate Developer Mode: Go to Settings → About Phone. 7 times click on MIUI Version (you will be notified "You are a developer!").

Additional settings → For developers

Disable the navigation panel

Hide the navigation panel

Reset the device.

Once you reboot, the buttons will become transparent, but they will remain active, and to return them back, you just need to re-disable this option in the developer menu.

Developer mode activated |Settings backup |Application compatibility checked |Device charged more than 50%-->

⚠️ Note: On some models (POCO X3 Pro, Redmi K40) Hiding the navigation bar can lead to conflict with gestures in games. PUBG Mobile or Call of Duty swipes will be perceived as control commands, not game actions.

3. Use of the ADB-team forced_fullscreen

If the standard methods do not help, you can resort to ADB-This method allows you to force full-screen mode on even devices where it is not supported by default.

What you need:

• 🖥️ Computer with installed Xiaomi drivers and tool ADB.
• 🔌 USB-cable (preferably original).
• 📱 Included debugging by USB phone-on.

Step-by-step:

1. Connect your phone to your PC and open the command line (Win + R → cmd).
2. Enter the command to check the connection: adb devices (should appear serial number of your device).
3. Execute the command to enable full screen mode: adb shell settings put global force_fullscreen 1
4. Reboot the phone.

To return the buttons back, use the same command by replacing 1 with 0:

adb shell settings put global force_fullscreen 0

⚠️ Note: On custom firmware devices (e.g. Xiaomi.EU or Pixel Experience) the team force_fullscreen This can cause soft-brick. Before you execute commands, make sure you have the official version installed. MIUI.

4. applications for hiding buttons (without root)

If you don't want to mess with settings or ADB, you can use third-party utilities.

• 📱 Nacho Notch – hides buttons and notches, supports Xiaomi on Android 10+.
• 🎨 Full Screen Gestures – Emulates gestures on devices without native support.
• 🔄 Hide Navigation Bar – a simple towel for temporary concealment of the panel.

How to work with Nacho Notch:

1. Install the app from Google Play.
2. Grant permission to Overlay over other applications.
3. Enable the Hide Navigation Bar option.
4. Set up exceptions for applications where buttons should stay (e.g., in bank clients).

On devices with MIUI 14 and later, button hiding applications may conflict with system memory optimization. If the utility starts to slow down after installing the utility, add it to the list of Secure Applications (Settings → Applications → Special Rights).

5. Root Methods: Complete removal of the navigation panel

For users with unlocked bootloader and root rights, radical ways are available: they allow you to physically remove the navigation bar from the system, but you need to be careful - wrong actions can lead to a brick (inoperability) of the device.

Root methods:

• 📜 Editing build.prop - adding a line qemu.hw.mainkeys=1 causes the system to “think” that there are physical buttons on the device.
• 🗑️ Deletion of system files - deletion /system/usr/keylayout/Generic.kl (requires backup!).
• 🔧 Magisk modules, such as FullScreen Magisk Module.

An example of editing build.prop:

1. Install Root Explorer or a similar file manager with root access.
2. Open the file /system/build.prop.
3. Add the line at the end: qemu.hw.mainkeys=1
4. Save the changes, set the rights 644 and restart the device.

⚠️ Note: On devices with dynamic memory area (Dynamic) RAM, like Xiaomi 12T) editing build.prop can cause RAM distribution to fail. Create a full backup through the full RAM before making changes TWRP.

6. Features for POCO and Black Shark

POCO and Black Shark line devices use modified versions of MIUI, where standard button hiding techniques may not work. For example, on POCO F5, gestures are disabled by default due to optimizations for gaming, and on Black Shark 5 Pro, the navigation bar is integrated into the game launcher.

Solutions for POCO:

• 🎮 Turn on Game Mode. → Full screen mode (hiding buttons only in games).
• 🔄 Use it. ADB-flag-bearer --user 0: adb shell cmd overlay enable-exclusive com.android.internal.systemui.navbar.gestural --user 0

Solutions for Black Shark:

• 🖥️ Install Shark Space and activate Immersive Mode.
• 🛠️ Disable Game Dock in the launcher settings (it blocks system gestures).

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Nana POCO X3 Pro and POCO F3 GT Hiding buttons through the developer's settings leads to a bug with swipe animation. ADB-team or third-party applications.

Frequent problems and their solutions

Even with the right settings, users encounter bugs, and here are the most common ones and how to fix them:

If none of the methods worked, check:

• 📋 Version MIUI — beta-fixed (MIUI China Beta: Some features may be disabled.
• 🔄 Firmware region - on global versions (MIUI Global) more restrictions than Chinese.
• 🛠️ Availability of updates in new versions MIUI Often correcting bugs with gestures.

FAQ: Answers to popular questions