How to Remove Apps from Xiaomi’s Background Mode: The Complete Guide

Xiaomi’s current MIUI and new HyperOS smartphones are famous for their functionality, but sometimes aggressive optimization or incorrect software behavior leads to a problem. Users often face a situation where the battery runs out in front of their eyes and the device heats up for no apparent reason. The culprits are often processes that continue to work even when you close the corresponding window.

Background mode is necessary to receive notifications and synchronize data, but some applications abuse this right: they can constantly update geolocation, download heavy advertising or perform mining until you use the gadget, this not only reduces autonomy, but also creates an extra load on RAM, slowing down the launch of really useful programs.

In this guide, we'll look at proven ways to force services to stop, you'll learn how to configure your system to control voracious programs, and properly configuring background processes is key to keeping your device running smoothly throughout the day.

Why Stop Background Processes and When to Stop It

Many smartphone owners mistakenly believe that the Android operating system is the perfect resource allocation. However, the reality is that app developers often implement code that keeps processes active for data collection or advertising. Understanding how to remove apps from the Xiaomi background becomes a critical skill for advanced users.

The main reason for the intervention is abnormal charge consumption, and if you notice that your phone is 10-20% dead overnight even though you haven't used it, then some program is preventing the processor from going into deep sleep, and this is also true when you start heavy games: if RAM is full of garbage, the game will slow down or fly out.

⚠️ Warning: Forced shutdown of Google system services or components MIUI This can cause notifications to malfunction and interface failures.

There are several scenarios where manual control is simply necessary:

• The smartphone is very warm in your pocket, although the screen is off.
• The new app is not running due to a lack of free RAM.
• You want to maximize your energy saving time.
• The application is getting stuck and does not respond to touch, blocking the system.

Don't go too far. Android is designed to make frequently used apps run faster from memory than from scratch, but heavy programs like navigators or marketplaces are better kept under control.

Basic method through the menu of running applications

The simplest and most obvious method that even beginners know about is using the multitasking menu, which is the first line of defense to free up resources quickly, but it's important to understand the difference between visually closing a window and actually stopping the process.

To use this method, swipe from the bottom up (or click the menu button if navigation is enabled) and find an unnecessary app. Swipe up or click the cross, close it. New versions of HyperOS have an "X" button to clean all windows at once.

Although simple, it has limitations: the system often automatically restarts important processes a few seconds after closing, which is normal behavior for instant messengers, but undesirable for background downloaders.

To clean it up deeper, you can use a built-in accelerator. Click on the broom icon in the task menu or run the Security app and select Memory Cleanup. This will forcefully terminate processes that the system considers inactive, but will not stop services marked as important.

Forced Stop through Android Settings

If simply closing a window doesn’t work, you need to use a regular Android mechanism called Forced Stop, a more radical method that completely kills the application process until you start it again.

To do this, go to Settings → Applications → All apps. Find a problem program (such as a game or social network) in the list. Click on it to open a detailed management menu.

In the menu that opens, you will see a large blue Stop (or Complete) button, and the system will warn you that the application may not work correctly — this is a standard warning, it can be ignored for third-party software. Once clicked, the process will be completely stopped, and it will disappear from the list of running tasks.

The advantage of this method is that the application can't restart itself. It will sleep until you consciously open its icon, which is perfect for programs that you rarely use, but that are constantly hanging in your memory.

⚠️ Note: After a forced stop, you will no longer receive notifications from this application (messages, calls, letters) until it is manually launched.

Use this method for heavy apps like Ozon, Wildberries, banking clients or games. For instant messengers (Telegram, WhatsApp), it is not recommended to use a forced stop if you want to stay connected.

Configure background activity restrictions in MIUI and HyperOS

Xiaomi’s shells provide powerful tools to fine-tune the behavior of programs, so instead of constantly stopping applications manually, you can configure the system to limit their activities, which is the most effective way to combat battery drain.

Go to Settings → Applications → Select the desired application → Auto Run. You can prevent the program from running with the system. Next, go to Saving battery (or “charge consumption”). Select the mode “Limit background activity” or “Strict limit”.

When you select a tight constraint, the system will block any attempts by the application to run in the background, receive data, or update, which makes the program sleeper until you open it.

Also worth paying attention to is the notification settings. Often, the app keeps the process active just for the sake of push notifications. If you don't need notifications from the store or game, just turn them off in the same app settings menu, which automatically reduces its priority for the system.

Xiaomi HyperOS owners should check Advanced Settings → Memory Optimization, which makes the system more aggressively unload long-unused applications from RAM.

Using Developer Mode to Control Processes

For those who want to gain full control of the system, there is a hidden menu called "Developers" that allows you to see the real list of running services and stop them, as well as adjust the limits of background processes globally for the entire system.

To activate the menu, go to Settings → About Phone and quickly click 7-10 times on the MIUI Version (or OS Version). You will see a message that you have become a developer. Now a new section will appear in the main settings menu Additional → For developers.

In this section, find the item "Background Process Limit"; the default is "Standard Limit", but you can choose "No Background Processes" or limit the number of processes (for example, no more than 2), which will cause the system to immediately kill unnecessary processes.

There's also a "Run Services" item on the developer menu, which shows detailed statistics of how each process uses RAM, and you can click on the service and select "Stop" if you see that a program consumes a disproportionate amount of resources.

⚠️ Warning: Changing the global limits in the developer menu can cause the music to be interrupted when switching to other apps, and the navigator will stop plotting the route in the background.

Use these settings with caution. For everyday use, it is better to leave standard settings or choose a limit of 3-4 processes to maintain a balance between performance and autonomy.

Analysis of statistics and search for hidden consumers

Sometimes users don’t even know which app is eating up resources, and Xiaomi’s built-in statistics tools can help identify such intruders, an important step in diagnosing them before taking drastic measures.

Go to Settings → Battery → Charge consumption. Here is a list of applications, sorted by energy consumption. Pay attention not only to percentage, but also to the time you are running in the background. If the application you were not using has high background time, this is a candidate for forced stop.

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Note the settings “Active Time” and “Background Time”: If the latter is significantly higher than the former for simple applications (calculator, reader), then the program is not working correctly.

Also check Settings → About Phone → All Options → Advanced Statistics (the path may vary depending on the version of MIUI) and you can see a detailed report on the wakes of the processor (Wakelocks).

Frequent culprits are:

• Shopping apps that constantly update geolocation.
• Social networks with built-in video players.
• Games with live widgets on the desktop.
• File managers that index memory in the background.

Once you identify a problem application, go back to the restriction settings section and apply tough rules to it, often solving the discharge problem without having to delete the program.

Frequent questions and troubleshooting

Even after setting up the system, questions may arise, and here are the answers to the most popular user queries related to managing background processes on Xiaomi devices.

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The optimal strategy is not to fight all the processes at once, but to identify 2-3 main “eaters” of the battery through statistics and adjust individual strict restrictions for them.