How to speed up Xiaomi: from simple settings to deep optimization

Modern smartphones in the Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO line are famous for their performance, but over time, even powerful flagships begin to slow down.It is a natural process of accumulating digital garbage, fragmenting the database and weighting the shell of MIUI or HyperOS. Users often notice that the interface has become less responsive and applications open longer than when buying a device.

In this article, we will discuss proven methods that will help you return to your old speed without the need to flash or go to the service center. We will touch on both standard system tools and hidden functions for developers that are hidden from the eyes of the average user.

Before embarking on radical measures like a complete reset, it is worth trying comprehensive software optimization, and often the problem lies not in hardware weakness, but in the wrong configuration of the system, which consumes resources.

Analysis of causes of slowdown and memory cleaning

The first step to speeding up an Android smartphone is to understand what is eating up CPU and RAM resources. The main culprits are usually background processes, sprawling app cache and crowded internal storage. When disk space runs out, the speed of writing and reading data drops dramatically.

Security is a built-in tool that is often neglected as useless, but it works correctly with the MIUI file system. Regular use of Cleanup allows you to delete temporary files, remnants of deleted applications and advertising debris.

And you can see the downloads folder and the messengers, and that's where gigabytes of unnecessary photos, videos and documents are accumulated, and they're automatically synchronized and they take up space. 10-15% The total memory volume dramatically changes the behavior of the system.

• 🗑️ Remove rarely used apps that hang in the background and consume battery.
• 📸 Check the folders in the gallery “Recently deleted” and clean them finally.
• 📂 Transfer heavy files (photos, videos) to cloud storage or to your computer.

⚠️ Warning: Do not use third-party accelerators from the Play Market with dubious reputations. They are often the source of advertising and load the system, instead of helping to help.

It is important to check periodically which applications have autorun permission, and in the battery settings, you can limit background activity for programs that do not need to run constantly, such as delivery services or marketplaces.

Optimization of the interface and animations

The visual part of the MIUI shell is beautiful, but requires GPU resources. If your smartphone is not a top-end model, excessive animation can create the illusion of lags. Reducing the duration of transitions or completely turning them off makes the interface “dry”, but instantly responsive.

To access these settings, you need to activate the developer mode, which is a secure procedure that gives you access to deep system settings, and you have to click seven times on the build number in the About Phone section.

Once you activate the developer menu, go to the advanced settings, find the items that are responsible for the scale of the animation of the windows, transitions and animation duration. The standard value is 1x. Changing it to 0.5x or 0x will speed up the visual perception of the system.

Also worth paying attention to is the design theme: Heavy themes with live wallpaper and lots of widgets on the desktop can reduce FPS when scrolling screens. Using static, lightweight wallpaper is an easy way to unload the graphics engine.

• 🎨 Install standard static wallpaper instead of dynamic.
• 📉 Reduce the number of widgets on the home screen to a minimum.
• ⚙️ Turn off the parallax effect of wallpaper in the theme settings.

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Use "Black Theme" in the screen settings. AMOLED-displays, this not only saves charge, but also reduces the load on the rendering of the interface.

Managing Autoboot and Background Processes

Chinese firmware is known for aggressive memory management, but some applications still manage to sign up for autoboot, which leads to the fact that immediately after turning on the phone, the processor is loaded by 30-40%, although you have not yet started anything.

In the "Applications" -> "Permissions" -> "Autostart" section, only messengers (Telegram, WhatsApp) and the alarm should be left on. The rest of the programs, such as online stores, banks or social networks, do not need to start constantly with the system.

Special attention should be paid to the Memory Extension feature, which is available on new models, which uses part of the internal memory as a RAM. paradoxically, on fast drives it can even slow down, since the speed of virtual RAM is lower than the physical.

Remember to reboot your smartphone regularly, a routine that cleans up RAM from hanging processes and resets driver errors, and one reboot a week is enough to keep the system healthy.

Settings for developers: speeding up work

The developer menu hides tools that can actually affect touchscreen response and data processing, but it’s important to be careful not to disrupt the stability of individual applications.

One of the useful features is to limit background processes, so you can tell the system hard how many apps can stay active in the background, and setting a "No background processes" value can speed things up, but it will cause the music in the player to stop when you leave the application.

It's also worth checking the Hardware Acceleration setting. In modern Android versions, it's on by default, but if you run into problems after the upgrade, forced on 2D-Acceleration can solve problems with rendering the interface.

There is a myth that turning on the “Disable background processes” option always speeds up the phone, in fact, it forces the system to constantly re-run applications, which can even increase battery consumption and put a strain on the processor when switching between tasks often.

⚠️ Note: Do not change the settings associated with the "Minimum width» (DPI), If you're not sure what you're doing, it can make the interface unreadable or cause a touchscreen to crash.

Working with cache and application data

Social networks, especially Telegram and Instagram, have the ability to grow to giant sizes. Cache can take up from 5 to 20 GB of space, which is critical for models with little memory. Clearing the cache through the app settings is safe and does not delete your logins or correspondence.

For junk files that are not deleted by standard means, you can use the file manager. /Android/data and /Android/obb folders contain game and program data, but there may also be remnants of remote applications.

If a particular application (like a browser or YouTube) is slow, try not just clearing the cache, but completely clearing the data, which will return the program to a post-installing state, which often solves problems with hanging.

• 📱 Go to Settings -> Annexes -> All applications.
• 🔍 Find a “heavy” app (like Chrome or TikTok).
• 🧹 Click on “Memory” and select “Clear Cache».

It's important to distinguish between cache cleaning and data cleaning. Cache is temporary files (pictures, scripts), and data is your in-app settings, saved passwords, and progress. Be careful when choosing an action.

System update and resetting

Sometimes the problem is bugs in the current firmware version. Xiaomi regularly releases security and optimization patches. Checking for updates in the About Phone section is a must before any manipulation.

If the software methods don’t help and the phone continues to slow down even in safe mode, the last resort is a full reset to the factory settings (Hard Reset), which is guaranteed to remove all software errors, viruses and accumulated debris.

Before reset, make sure to make a full backup of the data to the Mi Cloud cloud service or to your computer.The process completely destroys all information on the internal drive, including photos and contacts.

Once reset, don't restore all applications from the backup in bulk. It's better to reinstall only the essentials. Often, older, unoptimized versions of applications that have been migrated from the old backup cause lags on the clean system.

⚠️ Warning: Make sure the battery is over 50% before starting a reset or upgrade. interrupting the system file writing process may make it impossible to turn on the phone.

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Full reset (Hard Reset) is the most effective tool against software lags, if the hardware part of the device is serviceable.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)