Xiaomi Redmi Note 8, released a few years ago, is still popular due to its balanced features and affordable price. However, with each passing year, the MIUI operating system is getting new features, and modern applications are becoming more demanding on the CPU resources. This inevitably leads to the fact that the once-flashy interface begins to slow down and games work unstable, users notice delays when opening menus, long transitions between applications and periodic hangs.
Before you think about buying a new gadget, you should try comprehensive optimization of the software part. In most cases, the problem lies not in the physical wear of the iron, but in software debris, background processes and incorrect animation settings. Competent settings can restore the device to its former speed and responsiveness. System optimization is a process that requires consistent action and understanding of how Android works.
In this article, we will discuss proven methods that will help to revive your smartphone. We will not use questionable applications-"accelerators", which often only aggravate the situation by loading the processor. Instead, we'll turn to built-in developer tools and system settings. Decreasing rendering resolution in games could increase the number of users who use it. FPS on 20-30% So let's start to look at each step of acceleration in detail.
Current performance analysis and diagnosis
The first step before any action is to understand what is stopping the device from working. Don't blindly delete files or reset settings without identifying the cause. Often the bottleneck is overcrowded internal memory or overheating of the processor. First, check the vacant storage space. If more than 85% of the volume is filled, the system starts to work slower due to the nature of the file system.
Use the built-in Security tool, which is pre-installed in the MIUI shell, which allows you to quickly assess the state of the system. However, for a deeper analysis, you can use third-party but proven monitoring tools such as CPU-Z or AIDA64, which will show the current processor frequency, temperature and loading of RAM in real time.
Pay attention to the temperature of the case during active operation, if the smartphone is heated above 40-42 degrees, trottling, a forced reduction in the frequency of the processor to protect against overheating, will work, in which case the acceleration by software methods will not help until the heat sink problem is solved.
It's also important to check the operating system version. Sometimes older versions of Android or MIUI contain optimization bugs that are fixed in newer updates. However, on older devices, installing the latest firmware versions can, on the contrary, slow down, and you need to find a balance between stability and relevance.
Cleaning the system and optimizing memory
The most common reason for slowing down is a lack of RAM and overflowing app cache. Android is designed to keep running apps in memory for quick switching, but on 3 or 4GB RAM devices, this leads to constant reboots of background processes, which creates a “lag” effect.
Start by manually cache cleaning heavy apps like social media and instant messengers. These have the property of accumulating gigabytes of temporary files. Go to Settings → Apps → All apps, select the desired app (like Telegram or Chrome) and click Clear → Clear cache. Don’t confuse it with Clear Everything, or you’ll lose your authorization data.
To clean things up more deeply, you can use developer mode to limit background processes, which will cause the system to more aggressively unload applications from memory, freeing up resources for an active task, but this can cause notifications from messengers to arrive with a delay.
☑️ Checklist for quick cleaning
It is also important to remove or disable pre-installed apps that you do not use (bloatware). They often hang in the background and consume resources. Go to the application settings, find unnecessary services from Google or Xiaomi and click "Disable" if you can not delete.
⚠️ Note: Do not remove system applications whose purpose you do not know (for example, MIUI This can lead to unstable system operation or an endless restart cycle (bootloop).
Developer settings to speed up the interface
The most effective way to visually speed up the interface is to scale up the animations. Android uses long, smooth transitions by default, which look beautiful on powerful screens, but on older processors create a sense of slowness. Cutting down animation time makes the system's response instantaneous.
To access these settings, you need to activate the developer mode. Go to Settings → About the phone and quickly press 7 times on the item "Version" MIUI». After the message “You became a developer” appears in the settings menu, a new section “More” will appear» → «For developers».
Within this section, look for the "Drawing" subsection, and you're interested in three things: "Window animation," "Jump animation," and "Duration of animation." Change their value from 1x to 0.5x or even Disabled, and this change will immediately affect the speed of opening windows and switching between screens.
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If the animation scale changes, return the 0.5x value. Completely disabling animations (0x) on weak devices sometimes causes visual artifacts.
Also in the developer section, you can find the "Background Process Limit" setting: Set a "No More than 2 Processes" or "No Background Processes" limit if you want maximum performance in games. Remember, this will affect multitasking.
Another useful function is to disconnect HW-Overlay. Find the item "Disable the overlay" HW» And activate it. GPU handle all interface elements, which can reduce the load on the CPU, but increase energy consumption.
Managing Autoboot and Background Services
Many applications tend to run with the operating system and stay in memory, and not only does it slow down the load of the smartphone, but it also consumes the processor's resources, and the MIUI shell has a built-in tool to manage this process.
Go to Security → Permissions → Auto Run. Here you will see a list of all the apps that start with the system. Leave only messengers (for notifications) and antivirus enabled. Browsers, stores, games and delivery services should be turned off.
In addition to auto-run, check your work permits in the background. In the same Security menu, find Energy Saving and Performance. Make sure that there is no hard savings limit for important applications if you need notifications, but restrictions can be placed for games and heavy apps so that they don't hang in the background.
| Type of application | Recommended status | Impact on speed |
|---|---|---|
| Messengers (WhatsApp, Telegram) | Auto-launching of the VCL | Minimum |
| Social media (VK, Instagram) | Auto-start OFF | High (constant data collection) |
| Games | Auto-start OFF | Average. |
| Google/Xiaomi Services | Don't touch it. | Critical to the system |
Regularly checking this list helps keep the system clean. Apps are often updated and can be re-registered to boot without the user's knowledge.
Optimization of game mode and graphics
For Redmi Note 8 owners who use a smartphone to play, setting up the game mode correctly is critical, and in MIUI, it's called Game Turbo, which redistributes system resources to the game that's running, blocks notifications, and clears memory.
Add your games to Game Turbo via the Safety app. Inside the Game Turbo settings, select a performance profile. For the Snapdragon 665 processor that's installed in this model, the best balance between performance and temperature is the Maximum Performance Mode can cause rapid overheating and trottling.
Secret setting for the GPU
Within the games themselves, be sure to lower your graphics settings. Reduce rendering resolution, turn off shadows and post-processing. For the Snapdragon 665 processor and the Adreno 610 GPU, the priority should be frame stability, not beautiful picture.
There's also a method of changing DPIs, and there's a "Minimum Width" section for developers, and the standard value is usually around 360-392 dp. Increasing that number will make the interface elements smaller, but it'll fit more on the screen, but don't put the value above 450-500, or some applications' interfaces may go off or become unreadable.
Radical measures: Resetting and reflashing
If software optimization fails to deliver the desired results, the last but most effective method is a complete factory reset, which will remove all the accumulated garbage, conflicting files and registry errors over the years.
Before starting the procedure, make sure to create a full backup of the data. Use the Mi Cloud cloud or make a local copy to your computer. After the reset, you can only recover data from the backup.
To perform the reset, go to Settings → About Phone → Settings Reset → Erase all data. The process will take about 10-15 minutes. After the first turn on, the system will work as quickly as possible, since this is the state “out of the box”.
⚠️ Warning: Do not interrupt the reset process or turn off your smartphone if the battery is below 50%.Stop writing system files can turn the device into a "brick" requiring complex computer recovery.
In some cases, even when the reset does not help (for example, if the system partition is damaged), you need to completely flash the device from the computer. For Redmi Note 8 (codenamed ginkgo), there are many custom firmware based on pure Android (LineageOS, Pixel Experience), which work much faster than stock MIUI.
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Full reset (Factory Reset) returns the speed of the smartphone by 90-95% of the original, eliminating software conflicts accumulated over the years of use.