How to put wallpaper on Xiaomi smart watches: the complete guide

Personalization of wearables has gone from a simple whim to an industry standard: Smartwatch and fitness tracker owners want their screen to reflect their style, mood, or just make the eye happy every time they look. Xiaomi and its ecosystem provide a wealth of customization options, but the installation process isn’t always obvious to beginners.

Changing the dial is not just aesthetics; a properly chosen dial can significantly improve readability of health, pulse, or step data, while overly complex animations can negatively affect the device’s autonomy, causing the battery to run out faster than usual.

In this article, we will discuss in detail all ways to upload images to the screen of your gadget. We will touch on the nuances of working with an official store, installing your own photos and working with third-party applications for advanced users.

The process may vary depending on your device model, whether it’s the Mi Band 7, Mi Watch or older versions of trackers. It’s important to understand that the software is constantly updated and the application interface may change.

Official store dials: the basic method

The easiest and most reliable way to change design is to use an integrated directory. For most Xiaomi ecosystem devices, the main application is Zepp Life (formerly known as Mi Fit) or Xiaomi Wear, through which the device is synchronized and controlled.

Once you connect the watch to your smartphone, you need to go to the device profile, and you'll find the dial store or dial section, and you'll find hundreds of options here, from minimalistic hand clocks to complex weather and notification interfaces.

Many dials are marked with a "Free" icon, but there are also paid options. Once you select a design, just click the "Install" button. The file will be downloaded to the phone and then transmitted over Bluetooth for the watch. The process can take anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes depending on the weight of the file.

Keep in mind that the official dials are optimized by developers for maximum energy efficiency, and using them, you can be sure that the AMOLED or IPS screen will not consume excess energy for rendering graphics.

Set up your own photos with Zepp Life

If the standard options seem boring, you can put any photo in the gallery of your smartphone on the background, which makes the watch truly unique by placing photos of loved ones, pets or favorite landscapes there.

To start, open the Zepp Life app and go to Profile. Select your device from the list of connected devices. Find dial settings or dial store and scroll to the bottom of the list to Local or Mine.

Here you'll see the option of adding a new dial, and the system will suggest you select a photo from the gallery, and after you select an image, you'll probably be asked to adjust the time display: choose the font, color, and location of the hours and minutes in the photo.

⚠️ Note: When installing a photo dial on devices with AMOLED screens (e.g., Mi Band) 6/7/8) Try to choose images with a predominance of dark colors. Bright white elements on a black background can lead to uneven wear of the pixels and burnout of the matrix over time.

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Use high-resolution photos (minimum 300x300 pixels) to avoid blurring and “squares” on the small screen of the watch.

Once you have set up the composition, press the download button, compress the image and optimize it for the resolution of the tracker screen, and it is important to understand that the picture quality on the watch will always be lower than on the phone, due to the high pixel density and the small physical size of the display.

Some users find that the photo is cropped incorrectly, in which case it is better to pre-fracture the image into a square on the phone, leaving the main object in the center so that important details do not disappear behind arrows or activity widgets.

Use of third-party applications for customization

Official functionality is sometimes limited, and enthusiasts are looking for ways to get around these limitations. There are third-party apps like Notify for Mi Band or Tools & MiBand that provide access to hidden features and allow you to upload any images in any format.

These utilities typically require special permissions, and the application must have access to notifications, Bluetooth, and in some cases, the clock’s system files, giving you full control of the device, but you need to be careful.

With Notify for Mi Band, you can create complex scenarios, like changing wallpaper based on time of day, battery level, or location, and you can set the backgrounds to be bright in the morning and dark in the evening.

It is important to note that after updating the watch firmware or the Zepp Life application itself, third-party programs may stop working correctly. Xiaomi developers periodically close vulnerabilities through which unauthorized data recording was carried out on the device.

Also worth remembering is the memory limits: The tracker's internal storage is limited, and installing dozens of heavy custom dials can lead to a lack of space for new workout data or system updates.

Live wallpaper and animation: is the game worth the candle?

Modern models like the Mi Band 7 Pro or Mi Watch support live dials, which are animated images that respond to user actions or just cycle around, and it looks spectacular, but it comes at a price.

The main sacrifice when using animation is autonomy, if a static dial consumes minimal energy (especially on the basis of the energy required by the clock). AMOLED, where the black pixels are off, the animation makes the processor and the screen work in a heightened mode. 20-30%.

In addition, live wallpaper takes up much more space in the memory of the device. If you are used to storing a lot of data on the watch about tracks or music (on models with MP3), animated backgrounds can quickly exhaust free space.

Using animated wallpaper makes sense if you charge your watch daily or every day and a half. For models with a stated 14-day job, switching to live wallpaper can reduce this time to 5-7 days.

Installation problems and their solution

The wallpaper loading process doesn't always go smoothly. Users often experience sync errors when the progress bar freezes by 99% or an error message appears, most often the problem lies in an unstable Bluetooth connection.

If the installation is frozen, don't panic. Don't try to reboot the clock right away. First, close the app completely (unload it from your phone's memory) and open it again. Check if the power saving mode on your smartphone is on, which can limit the background processes.

Another common reason is the app's crowded cache: Go to your phone's settings, find the Zepp Life or Xiaomi Wear app, and clear the cache. This won't delete your data, but it can fix file transfer errors.

⚠️ Warning: Never interrupt the firmware process of the dial by turning off the phone screen or going far away from the clock. Interrupting data recording can cause the watch to "hang" on the logo or reset to factory settings.

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The stability of the Bluetooth connection is a key factor in the successful installation of any files on a smartwatch. Keep your phone near the clock during the process.

Also make sure there is enough free memory on the watch itself.If you have set up many tracks for running or music files, there may simply be no room for a new heavy dial.

Availability of AMOLED and Always on Display

Owners of AMOLED devices (Mi Band 6, 7, 8, Watch S1 and later) have a unique feature - Always On Display (AOD), which is a mode in which the watch does not go out completely, but shows a simplified version of the dial.

With AOD on, static image elements can burn out the screen, so the system automatically switches the clock to a special monochrome or darkened dial when you lower your hand, and it's important to understand the difference between an active screen and standby mode.

The AOD setting is usually in the same menu where you select the main dial, and you can choose whether it’s a black and white version of your photo, a standard manufacturer’s dial, or an all-black screen with seconds.

The use of AOD also has a significant impact on the battery, and depending on the model, enabling this feature can reduce the battery life by 2-4 days, a trade-off between aesthetics/convenience and autonomy.

If you’re often in a setting where it’s important to have a quick look-out (meetings, gym), AOD is a useful feature, but if you prioritize maximum duration on a single charge, you’d better leave the usual wrist-lift mode to activate the screen.

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