Owners of budget smartphones like the Redmi 7A often face the need to optimize workspace. The on-screen keyboard takes up a significant portion of the usable area of the display, and the built-in panel with emotional emojis can interfere with fast typing. Many users are looking for a way to completely get rid of this feature to speed up work or simply clean the interface of unnecessary elements.
A technical nuance is that it is impossible to completely remove the system component of the emoji without root rights, since they are built into the fonts and dictionaries of the Android system. However, there are several effective methods to hide the call button, disable the prediction or replace the standard keyboard with a more minimalist one. In this article, we will discuss all the options available for MIUI in detail.
Customizing your input is a matter of personal preference and ergonomics, and someone is used to typing with two thumbs, and the extra rows of buttons only confuse the rhythm. Others, on the contrary, do not represent communication without graphic images. We will look at solutions for those in the first category and want to clean the keyboard workspace from visual noise.
Why the Emoji Button is Intruding and Can It Be Removed?
The standard Gboard keyboard, which is pre-installed on the Xiaomi Redmi 7A, has a fixed set of controls. The emoji button is usually located in the bottom row, next to a space or a language change button. For users with narrow palms or a one-handed typing habit, this element often becomes a source of random taps.
Androidβs system limitations donβt allow you to simply βdeleteβ emojis as a regular application. They are part of the Unicode standard, supported by the operating system at a deep level. If you try to delete system font files without special preparation, this can lead to incorrect display of text in all applications, including system menus.
β οΈ Note: Attempts to delete keyboard system files through root file managers can result in a cyclical smartphone reboot or inability to enter an unlock password.
However, there are workarounds. You can adjust the behavior of the keyboard so that the emoji button stops showing up on the toolbar or is replaced by another function, and this is achieved through deep tuning of the input application itself or installing alternative solutions.
Setting up the standard Gboard keyboard on Redmi
The first and safest step is to use built-in customization tools. Google Keyboard has a flexible interface to hide certain items. To get into the settings menu, you have to open any type of text application and call the keyboard.
Press and hold a comma or a special button of settings (cogs) to go to the menu. Here you are interested in the Settings section, and then the Preferences subsection. This hidden menu contains the switches responsible for displaying additional rows and buttons.
Inside the preference menu, find the item associated with the display of the emoji button. In different versions of Gboard, it can be called differently, such as "Show the emoji button" or "Smiley button." Disabling this slider will hide the button from the panel, although the characters themselves will remain available through the symbol menu.
βοΈ Setting up Gboard
And you also have to pay attention to the toolbar, which sits above the main key row, and it contains buttons for inserting GIFs, translating them, and of course, emojis, and if you turn off the toolbar completely, you'll free up some extra space, although that will remove other useful features like the clipboard.
Hiding the toolbar and additional rows
If a simple deactivation of the button didn't work, you can go further and turn off the entire top row of the keyboard. On the Redmi 7A, with its screen diagonal, each pixel on the score. The toolbar often takes up to 15 percent of the screen height, which is critical when typing long messages.
To do this, go back to the basic settings of Gboard. Find the Toolbar section. Here you will see the Toolbar Show switch. Deactivating this setting will remove the top line of the icons. This is a radical but effective method for those who value minimalism.
You can also experiment with themes, some keyboard themes that visually obscure or make the buttons for calling additional features less visible. Go to the Topics section and choose the option with monochrome or dark design, where the secondary buttons merge with the background.
How do you get the toolbar back?
Remember that once the toolbar is hidden, the emoji will only be accessed by long-term Enter presses or by the character menu if activated, which is addictive, but makes typing much faster in the long run.
Use of third-party minimalist keyboards
When standard MIUI and Gboard tools are exhausted, third-party developments come to the rescue. There are many keyboards in the Google Play store designed specifically for those who want to get rid of visual noise, which are often less weighty and run faster on low-end processors.
One of the popular options is the Simple Keyboard, which is an open-source project that only provides letters and numbers, and there's no default emoji button, no cloud sync, no redundant resolutions, and once installed, it becomes the perfect solution for the "delete emoji" problem.
Another option is FlorisBoard or Hacker's Keyboard, which, for example, mimics the layout of a physical PC and allows you to completely reassign any keys, you can assign an emoji to a complex combination, effectively removing them from everyday use.
| Keyboard name | Size of APK | Presence of emoji | Support for Russian |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gboard (Standard) | ~45MB | Yeah (embedded) | Yes. |
| Simple Keyboard | ~1.5 MB | No (text only) | Yes. |
| Hacker's Keyboard | ~3MB | Optionally. | Yes. |
| FlorisBoard | ~15MB | Hidden. | Yes. |
When you install a third-party keyboard, Android will issue a security alert, which is standard, because the keyboard can theoretically read input, but open-source applications like Simple Keyboard are considered safe by the community.
Alternative input methods and voice dialing
Modern technology allows you to completely abandon tactile input in favor of voice. On Xiaomi Redmi 7A, the microphone works well enough for dictating messages. Google voice input automatically converts words into text, ignoring the need for buttons.
To activate this mode, tap the microphone icon on the keyboard or use the "OK, Google" command. In the voice input settings, you can turn off the display of prompts and emojis, leaving only clear text, which is especially convenient when your hands are busy or you are moving.
β οΈ Attention: Voice input requires an internet connection to enable the most accurate speech recognition algorithms to work, and offline accuracy may decline, especially when recognizing complex proper names.
Another method is to use text abbreviations, and in the Gboard dictionary settings, you can create a rule: when you type "cm," you automatically substitute "smiley" or any other commonly used text, which allows you to do without the graphical buttons completely.
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Use the Personal Dictionary feature in your language settings to create short codes for long phrases. For example, the Adr code can unfold to your full home address.
Compatibility issues and MIUI bugs
Android-based MIUI shell sometimes makes adjustments to system input applications. Redmi 7A users may find themselves in a situation where, after a system update, keyboard settings are reset and the emoji button returns.
This is because the system updater can overwrite Google application configuration files. To avoid this, check your Settings settings after each major update. β Advanced settings β Language and input. This is where the standard keyboard can be activated. MIUI, which will also need to be reconfigured.
Sometimes there is a bug where the keyboard freezes in emoji mode and does not switch to letters. In this case, cleaning the app cache helps. Go to Settings β Apps β All apps β Gboard β Memory and click Clear Cache.
It's important to distinguish between cache and data. Cleaning up the data will return the keyboard to factory status, and all your dictionaries will be lost. Clearing the cache is safe and often solves the problems with the interface freeze.
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Regularly checking your settings after MIUI updates is the only way to ensure that your keyboard preferences are maintained.