Owners of Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphones often face the need for constant connection quality control. Situations when you need to quickly assess how stable mobile traffic or Wi-Fi is, occur regularly: while downloading heavy files, online games or streaming videos. The standard interface of the MIUI shell or the new HyperOS does not always provide this information in a prominent place by default, which forces users to look for hidden settings.
Fortunately, the company’s engineers have built-in features that allow you to output the current data rate directly into the status bar, eliminating the need to install third-party applications that often overload the system and consume battery power. In this article, we will discuss in detail how to activate this useful indicator, as well as alternative methods for monitoring traffic for advanced users.
Understanding how background loads and traffic flow work can save you a lot of money on your communications budget, and users often don’t even know that an app is consuming gigabytes in the background until the speed indicator shows abnormally high values, which is why turning on the speed display is the first step to fully controlling your device’s network connections.
Activation of the speed indicator through standard settings
The easiest and most reliable way to see the speed of the Internet is to take advantage of the built-in features of the system. You don't need superuser rights or complex code manipulation. All the necessary switches are in the settings menu, but their location may vary slightly depending on the firmware version.
To start, open the main menu and find the Settings icon. Next, the path can vary: in older versions of MIUI, look for the Notifications section and the status bar, while in current HyperOS builds, this item is often moved to the Additional section within the general settings or is located in the Screen menu. Find the option to Display network speed and activate the slider.
⚠️ Warning: If the numbers don't appear after the option is turned on, try restarting your smartphone. In rare cases, the system process responsible for the status bar requires a restart to apply the changes.
When you activate the status bar on the right side, next to the signal icons or Wi-Fi, you'll see numbers showing the current speed in kilobytes or megabytes per second, and that value is updated in real time to respond to any traffic spikes, and if the indicator shows 0 K/s, then at this point, no applications are using an active network connection.
☑️ Checking indicator activation
Setting up speed widgets on the desktop
If you don't have enough of a narrow status bar, MIUI offers more informative widgets that not only show your current speed but also your traffic history, which is especially convenient for users with limited data plans.
To add a widget, make a long tap from an empty desktop and select Widgets. In the menu that opens, scroll through the list to the Tools or Network section. Here you will find several design options, from minimalist numbers to large graphs. Choose the right design and drag it to the screen.
- 📊 Classic widget: shows the current speed and amount of traffic spent per month.
- 📈 Graphic widget: displays the dynamics of speed in the form of a diagram for the last minutes.
- 🌐 Wi-Fi Monitor: A separate widget that focuses solely on wireless connection parameters.
If you notice a smartphone’s accelerated discharge after installing graphics, it’s best to limit yourself to a standard speed display, and widgets may disappear when you change the theme if the new theme doesn’t support standard system components.
Why does the widget show incorrect data?
Use of engineering menu and hidden functions
For advanced users who don't have much standard functionality, there are hidden diagnostic menus that can access detailed connection statistics, including the signal strength in dBm and the type of frequency used, but beware: changing unknown parameters in the engineering menu can lead to unstable operation of the communication module.
A combination of codes in the Phone app is often used to enter the test menu. Try entering ##4636##. If the code is suitable for your model and region, the Testing menu will open, where you can see detailed connection information in the Phone Information section, and the preferred network type settings are sometimes available here.
| Parameter | Description | Normal value. |
|---|---|---|
| Signal Strength | Network signal level | -80 dBm and higher |
| Network Type | Type of connection | LTE or 5G |
| Cell ID | Cell ID | Any number |
| Data Connected | Status of data transfer | True |
These menus are justified when diagnosing coverage problems or when setting up a smartphone in areas of insecure reception. For the average user, just to view Internet speed, the standard settings described in the previous sections are enough. Don't change the values in the engineering menu unless you know exactly what they are responsible for.
💡
For quick access to traffic statistics without logging into a deep menu, just pull the notification curtain down to the end - it often displays the current download speed if the appropriate style option is enabled.
Third-party applications for traffic monitoring
If Xiaomi’s built-in tools don’t seem informative enough, Google Play offers a variety of customized tools that allow you to keep detailed records of traffic consumption by each application separately, set limits and create complex reports.
Popular applications such as Internet Speed Meter Lite or Network Speed Test can output speed anywhere on the screen, even on top of other applications. They often have more flexible number formatting settings and can show speed in bits, bytes or kilobits of the user's choice.
- 🚀 Setting flexibility: the ability to change color, font size and indicator position.
- 📉 History: Preserving statistics for weeks and months of use.
- ⚠️ Resource capacity: such applications work in the background constantly, which increases energy consumption.
Installing third-party monitoring makes sense if you’re managing a network or you need to know exactly which app is eating up traffic in the background, but most of the time, it’s just a regular system functionality that’s optimized by Xiaomi specifically developers for their hardware.
Display problems and their solution
Sometimes users are faced with a situation where the speed indicator is turned on in the settings, but the numbers do not appear. This can be caused by a conflict of design themes. Third-party themes from the MIUI Themes store often rewrite the system interface files, ignoring the standard elements of the status bar.
To fix this, try temporarily switching to the standard Classic or No Limits theme, and if the numbers came up after the theme change, it means that the shell design was the problem, and some themes require an additional patch or don't support all MIUI elements correctly.
⚠️ Note: If the theme change didn’t help, check for system updates. Older firmware versions may have bugs patched in newer HyperOS releases or MIUI.
Also worth checking permissions for system applications. Go to the application settings, find the System UI process or System Interface and make sure it has all the necessary rights. Resetting the settings of this process (not data, namely resetting to the factory settings of the application) can also help to return functionality.
💡
Custom-themed conflict is the most common reason for the speed indicator to disappear, and going back to standard design solves the problem 90 percent of the time.
The impact of energy saving on the network
The power saving mode in Xiaomi smartphones aggressively restricts background activity, which can affect the frequency of updating the speed indicator. In the mode of "Ultra-saving" or battery austerity, the system can less often poll the network module, which will cause the numbers on the screen to change with a delay.
If you're critical to see the current speed in real time, make sure the power saving mode is off or configured in soft mode. In battery settings, you can add important applications to exceptions, but the system speed indicator depends on the overall power saving settings of the device.
Also, when the network signal is weak, the smartphone starts to consume more power to maintain the connection, and in such conditions, the speed indicator can jump, showing either high or low values, this is normal behavior, reflecting the struggle of the communication module for a stable data packet in a jammed environment.