How to speed up your Xiaomi phone with MIUI 12

Xiaomi smartphone owners often experience a noticeable decline in performance after upgrading to the MIUI 12 shell. Animations become smoother but require significant CPU and RAM resources, which leads to micro-latency when switching between applications.If your gadget started to run slower, it does not mean that it is time to buy a new device.

There are a number of software methods that can help bring the interface back to sharpness and reduce system response time. In this article, we will explore proven optimization methods that affect both standard settings and hidden features of the engineering menu.

Before we start taking radical measures, we need to understand the nature of slowing down, often because of background processes, drive cache, or over-imaging, and we'll look at each aspect in detail so you can choose the right acceleration strategy.

Memory Cleanup and Application Management

The first step to improving performance is to review installed programs. Many applications that you rarely use continue to hang in memory and consume CPU resources. Remove unnecessary software or, if deletion is impossible, use the freeze function.

The built-in security tool in MIUI allows you to quickly clear RAM, but this is not enough for long-term effect. You need to go into settings and forcefully stop the heavy processes that start automatically when the system starts.

• 🚀 Go to Settings. → Annexes → All applications and sort the list by the amount of memory consumed.
• 🗑️ Delete the cache of messengers such as Telegram and Viber through their internal settings, as standard cleaning often does not affect media files.
• ⚙️ Turn off auto-run for all but the most essential apps via the Permissions menu → Auto-start.

Social media, which is known for being gluttonous to resources, is a great place to go if you don't use it all the time, and you're better off removing official customers and using web versions or lightweight ones.

⚠️ Warning: Do not remove system applications that you are not sure of, which can cause the shell to function unstable. MIUI Errors in basic phone functions.

Regular cleaning of storage also plays an important role: when the space on the internal drive runs out, the speed of writing and reading data decreases, try to keep at least 15-20% of the total storage free.

Optimization of animations and visual effects

MIUI 12 is famous for its beautiful but heavy animations. If the phone is slow, lowering the graphics quality is the most effective way to speed up response. There are hidden parameters in the developer menu that allow you to control the speed of transitions.

To access these settings, you have to click on the build number in About Phone several times, and after activation of the developer mode, a new menu will appear, where we are interested in Drawing, and here are the key parameters for acceleration.

Changing the scale of the animation window, transition and duration of the animator from 1x to 0.5x visually speeds up the interface by two times. the system stops wasting time drawing long transitions, instantly opening the desired windows.

You should also pay attention to the Extension Memory feature, if it's available on your model, which allows you to use part of the permanent storage as virtual RAM, but if your drive doesn't have a high read speed, it can, on the contrary, slow down.

You should not completely disable animations (value 0x), as this can disrupt the logic of the interface and make navigation less understandable. 0.5x is the optimal balance between speed and visual comfort.

Display settings and refresh rate

The image quality directly affects the load on the graphics accelerator. AMOLED-Using a dark theme can significantly reduce power consumption and slightly unload the system when rendering black.

Screen refresh rate is an important parameter. On models with support for 90 Hz or 120 Hz, switching to a standard 60 Hz can improve the stability of the processor, especially if the battery is discharged or the device is heated.

• 📱 Go to Settings. → Screen. → Update frequency and select Standard if you notice the lags.
• 🌙 Activate Dark Mode in the Notification Curtain to Reduce the Load on the Matrix.
• 💡 Reduce the time before going to sleep to 30 seconds to save charge.

The screen resolution is also adjustable on some flagship models. Decreasing the resolution from 2400×1080 to 1600×720 will give a tangible increase in FPS in games and overall responsiveness of the system, although the picture will become less clear.

⚠️ Warning: Changing screen resolution may cause fonts to display incorrectly in some applications. Return standard settings if you notice interface distortions.

PaperTouch, or color temperature-changing vision protection, also consumes resources when you're constantly adapting, and if you're not uncomfortable, you might want to turn off automatic color temperature control.

Network settings and background synchronization

Constant network search and background data synchronization are hidden resource eaters, and if the mobile signal is weak, the phone modem runs at its limits, causing heat and brakes on other tasks.

Check which apps have access to geolocation.Constant survey GPS-The module is very loading, and it is recommended that most applications only have permission to access the location during use.

In the Settings → Wi-Fi → Wi-Fi Assistant menu, disable the automatic switch to mobile Internet. Constant monitoring of connection quality creates an extra load on the processor.

Synchronizing Mi Cloud and Google Photos cloud services needs to be configured rationally. If you have thousands of photos, background loading can completely paralyze your phone, set up Wi-Fi-only sync, or postpone it for charging time.

Using Developer Mode for Deep Cleaning

For advanced users, you can have deeper settings, and you can find the Do Not Activity option on the developer menu, which causes the system to destroy the application as soon as you leave it.

This feature radically frees up RAM, but can lead to applications running longer, as they don’t stay in a folded state, but run anew each time.

• 🛠️ Activate for Developers through seven-click on the version MIUI.
• 🧹 Find the item Do not leave activity and turn it on for testing.
• ⚡ Enable Hardware rendering acceleration (GPU Rendering, if there is such an option on the menu.

Also worth paying attention to the limitation of background processes: setting a limit of 2-4 process ensures that the system will not be overwhelmed by dozens of running tasks, this is especially true for models with 4 GB of RAM and less.

⚠️ Warning: Enabling the "Do Not Activity" option may disrupt widgets and live wallpaper. Use this method with caution and only if other methods have not helped.

Resetting Bluetooth and Wi-Fi settings through the developer menu or standard network settings sometimes helps eliminate software conflicts that cause interface hang-ups when working with the network.

Cardinal measures: Resetting and flashing

If software optimization failed, you may have accumulated critical file errors, in which case a full factory reset will help, and make sure to back up important data before doing so.

Resetting through Settings → About Phone → Resetting removes all user content and returns the phone to the “out of the box” state.

For power users, there is a method of clean flashing through the computer using the Mi Flash Tool utility. Selecting Clean All mode is guaranteed to delete all sections of user data and install a fresh copy of the firmware.

Once reset, you don't want to install all the applications from the backup, but install them gradually, by observing the behavior of the system, and this will help identify the application that caused the brakes.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)