How to remove a smart album from the gallery on Xiaomi Redmi

Xiaomi and Redmi smartphone owners often face a situation where a standard gallery starts to behave too independently.The system automatically groupes photos by person, place or event, creating so-called smart albums.This is easy to find, but the visual noise on the menu often annoys users accustomed to the strict structure of folders.

The problem is that these albums are not ordinary directories that can be simply taken and deleted with a long press. They are dynamic filters and indexes created by AI algorithms of the MIUI shell. Trying to delete such a folder by standard methods often results in zero result or hiding only the shortcut, but not the function itself.

In this guide, we will take a detailed look at how to get rid of obsessive smart albums, hide them from the general list or completely disable the grouping function. You will learn about the intricacies of the Android file system on Xiaomi devices and get working methods for cleaning the interface.

The Nature of Smart Albums in MIUI and HyperOS

Before we start deleting, we need to understand what we're fighting against. Smart albums are not physical folders with files on your device's disk. They're virtual representations that are generated by the system based on the metadata of the photos: shooting dates, GPS-coordinates, recognized persons or objects.

When you see an album called People, Places, or Food, the gallery simply scans a database of media files and creates a template, which is why deleting such an album through the context menu is often impossible — you can't delete the search query that the system performs every time you open an application.

⚠️ Warning: Attempting to delete the system files responsible for the operation of the gallery through the file manager can lead to unstable application operation or complete disappearance of all photos from the interface.

Many users confuse smart albums with albums created by the cloud service Xiaomi Cloud or synchronization with Google Photos. It is important to distinguish these entities, since the methods of managing them are radically different. Local smart albums depend on the settings of the Gallery application itself, whereas cloud ones require management through an account.

Basic method: Hiding through gallery settings

The safest and most recommended way to remove the redundant is to use built-in concealment tools. Xiaomi has designed the ability to hide certain categories so that they do not horn your eyes, even if technically the feature continues to work in the background.

To start, open the Gallery app and go to the Album tab. In the upper right corner of the screen is a menu represented by three dots or a gear, and if you click on it, you will see Settings or Hide Albums, depending on the version of your shell.

The list that opens will have switches for different categories: People Albums, Place Albums, Screenshots, Videos. If you turn off the right switch, you will instantly hide the relevant section from the general list, and this action does not delete the photos, it only stops displaying their grouping.

• 📱 Open the Gallery app and click on three dots in the corner.
• 🔍 Select "Settings" or "Hide Albums".
• 🚫 Turn off sliders in front of unnecessary categories (People, Places).
• ✅ Check the main screen of the albums - the extra sections should disappear.

It's worth noting that new versions of HyperOS may have slightly changed the interface, so if you don't find a direct switch, look for the Display Settings section, which often hides options that control the visibility of system folders.

Removing People's Albums and Facial Recognition

One of the most intrusive features is that you can automatically create albums for each face you recognize, and the gallery scans thousands of photos and creates a separate folder for each person, even if you don't give them a name, and you can delete them, but the approach is very specific.

Go to the People album. You'll see a grid of faces. To delete a particular person's album, click on their avatar, then select Delete the album or Hide the face. The system will ask for confirmation, warning that the photos are not going anywhere, but will stop grouping by that face.

If your goal is to completely disable the creation of these albums, you need to go deeper into the settings. Go to Settings -> Face Recognition (or People). Here you can find the Group by Face switch. Disabling it will stop the creation of new smart albums, but old ones can stay until you manually delete them.

⚠️ Note: Disabling facial recognition may increase the CPU’s time during initial library processing, as the system will have to recalculate indices, but in the long run it will save resources.

If the system has created multiple albums for the same person (e.g., "Man 1", "Man 2"), it's better to use the "Unite" function than delete them, which will improve the accuracy of AI in the future.

Work with the album "Recent" and "Favorites"

The recent and favorites are system albums that are not classicly deletionable, they are dynamic sorts of the entire library, but users often want to clear or hide their content.

The album "Recent" is just a chronological list of all the photos. You can't delete it, but you can clean it up by deleting the photos themselves. The album "Favorites" is created manually: you put a heart on the photo, and it goes there. To remove the photo from there, you just press the heart again.

There's a nuance to the Deleted album. It's the Windows basket, and the photos are stored there for 30 days, and then they're deleted automatically, and you can force that process by going into the album and choosing Clear Everything.

It's important to understand the difference between deleting a category album and deleting files inside it. When you "clean" a smart album, you often delete the photos themselves from the device, because the album only points to them.

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Use the "Slide Show" mode in the lock screen settings so that photos from the albums "Favorites" or "Travels" are beautifully displayed on the locked screen, without taking up space in the main gallery.

Advanced method: Cleaning the application data

If standard methods didn't work and junk albums keep popping up, you can resort to a radical method: reset the Gallery app itself, which would bring the program back out of the box by removing all user caches and grouping settings.

Go to Settings of the phone, then to the Apps -> All Apps. Find in the Gallery list. Inside the app menu, select Clean -> Clear All (or Clear Data).

Settings → Applications → All Apps → Gallery → Clean → Clean Everything

After this procedure, the gallery will scan the memory again when it first starts, at which point it can create smart albums again, but your previous visibility settings will be reset, allowing you to re-configure them completely.

⚠️ Warning: This method doesn't delete your photos and videos, but resets editing settings, collages created and hidden albums inside the gallery.Be prepared to reconfigure the app.

Sometimes, after a data reset, it takes time for the system to re-index the media files, during which time the gallery may be slow or not showing all the images, which is normal behavior that will pass in 10-15 minutes.

Use of Third-Party File Managers

For those who want to have full control of folder structure, there is an alternative to using third-party galleries or file managers, such as Google Photos, Simple Gallery or FX File Explorer, which ignore proprietary MIUI settings and show the real file structure.

If you install an alternative gallery, you can designate it as the default app, in which case the standard Xiaomi gallery will stop running and you will no longer see its specific smart albums. Your photos will remain in place, but they will be organized by folders (DCIM, Pictures, Download), not by smart categories.

In addition, some file managers allow you to create.nomedia files in folders that you don't want to see in the gallery. It's a system tag file that says to the application, "Ignore the contents of this folder."

• 📂 Download the file manager with support for hidden files.
• 🔎 Find a folder that creates extra albums (often it is the messenger cache).
• 📝 Create an empty file called.nomedia.
• 🔄 Restart the device or clear the gallery cache.

This method is particularly effective for fighting off an album of WhatsApp Images or Telegram, which are often duplicated and create visual chaos.The.nomedia file will cause the gallery to completely ignore the contents of the folder.

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Using a third-party gallery is the most reliable way to get rid of the MIUI interface completely, while keeping all photos available through the file system.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)