Owners of Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphones often face the need to adapt the interface to their needs, especially for people with low vision or those who simply prefer larger controls on the display. The standard settings of the MIUI system and the new HyperOS provide a wide range of tools for personalization, but not all options lie on the surface.
Rescaling interfaces is not just cosmetic editing, but an important accessibility feature that makes it comfortable to use a device even without glasses, making navigation through the menu quick and intuitive. In this article, we will take a look at all the existing methods, from simple menu switches to advanced settings for developers.
Before we make any radical changes, it's worth noting that the MIUI shell has its own specifics: some topics may ignore system size settings, while others may have their own built-in regulators, so the approach must be comprehensive to achieve the perfect result on your particular device.
Basic settings of font size and elements
The easiest and safest way to make the interface bigger is to use standard system settings, which not only affect the text, but often pro rata increases the indentations and size of some graphics, including icons in the system menus. You don't need superuser rights or third-party software to access these settings.
You need to go to the Settings menu and find the Screen section, and that's where the main levers of visual content management are concentrated. Notice Text Size, which is often set to the default average. Moving the slider to the right will instantly change the scale of the fonts throughout the system.
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In some versions of MIUI, changing the text size automatically suggests increasing the size of the interface elements – agree to this offer for maximum effect.
Consider that over-enlargement of the font can cause text to go beyond the boundaries of dialog boxes or buttons. The system usually warns about this, but visual evaluation is mandatory. If after changing the font, the icons in the settings menu have become larger and the desktop remains the same, then your theme does not support dynamic scaling.
For users who are critically important to readability, there is a separate option called Enlarged Text, which is in Advanced Settings or Special Features, and activating this mode makes the font as large as possible, ignoring some of the limitations of the standard slider, which is especially useful for older people who are just learning smartphones.
Use of special opportunities
In the arsenal of the Android operating system, which runs Xiaomi smartphones, there is a powerful section dedicated to people with disabilities, which hides tools that allow you to increase icons and controls where standard settings are powerless.
This function works like a magnifier, and you can activate it by triple tapping the screen or by using a button in the status bar, and unlike just resizing the font, it increases everything that comes into view, including app icons, widgets and photos, and it doesn't change the size of the elements forever, but it allows you to see the object in detail.
How does the magnifier regime work?
To activate, go to Settings → Settings → Special Options → Vision. Find the Enlargement and turn it on. Here you can configure the activation method: triple tap or floating button. Using the triple tap is more convenient, because it does not take up space on the screen, but requires getting used to the rhythm of the presses.
Another useful option in this section is Color Inversion and High Contrast Text. While they don't physically enlarge icons, they make their boundaries clearer and more visible. The combination of zooming and contrast enhancement often yields better results than just huge icons that can take up half a screen.
- 🔍 Triple pressing allows you to quickly zoom in on any part of the screen without losing quality.
- 👆 A floating magnification button is always on hand, but can override content.
- 🎨 High contrast helps to better distinguish the boundaries of icons on colorful wallpaper.
Size setting through the developer menu
If you don't have enough standard sliders, a hidden developer menu comes to your aid, and it's a parameter that directly affects pixel density (DPI) and interface scale, and changing that parameter allows you to make icons and all the elements of the system really big, changing the logic of building a desktop grid.
To get into this menu, you need to quickly click seven times on the build number in the About Phone section. Once you have become a developer, a new item will appear in the Additional Settings section. Find the Drawing category and the Minimum Width (or Smallest Width) option.
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The lowering of the minimum width makes all interface elements larger. The standard value is usually around 360-390 dp.
Write down your current value before you make changes! If you put too small a number, the interface may become unreadable or elements will go off the screen, and it will be difficult to get everything back. It is recommended to reduce the value in steps of 20-30 units, checking the result. For example, if it costs 390, try to put 360.
⚠️ Warning: Do not set the minimum width below 300 dp unless absolutely necessary.This can cause the Close or Back buttons to be outside the visible area and control of the phone becomes impossible without resetting the settings.
Changing this parameter affects all applications. In some programs, the layout can go because they are not designed for this density of elements. However, for system icons and settings menus, this is the most effective way to achieve a large size without losing graphics quality, since the recalculation is at the level of the system rendering.
Application of themes with large icons
The MIUI and HyperOS shells are famous for their store-themed, which allows you to radically change the appearance of a smartphone. Many users do not know that there are specialized themes designed specifically for people with poor eyesight or just prefer minimalism and large graphics.
Go to the Themes app and search for "Large icons," "Big icons," "older" or "Senior." You'll be surprised to find that there are hundreds of them. They replace the standard little icons with huge, bright and clear images, often with captions, and installing a theme is the fastest way to zoom in on the desktop and on the app menu.
When choosing a topic, pay attention to screenshots of the lock screen and call menu. Often, theme writers make large app icons, but forget about the dial interface, which remains small. Quality themes for the visually impaired work all the screens of the system, including the calculator and messages.
If you liked the theme, but the size of the icons in it still seems small, try combining it with the settings.