Owners of Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphones often face a situation where the device starts to work slower after several months of active use. RAM is overflowing with background processes, which causes applications to open longer and the interface reacts with a delay. In a MIUI system or the new HyperOS, the resource management mechanism is specific, and standard cleaning methods are not always enough for stable operation.
There are many reasons why RAM (Random Access Memory) fills up faster than you can close tabs in your browser, which can be an incorrect application, too aggressive animations or features of the work of Google system services. It is important to understand that completely free memory is a myth, but critical overflow leads to the reboot of heavy programs.
In this guide, we will look at proven optimization methods that will help you get your gadget back on track. Some require minimal settings on the developer menu, others are available to everyone immediately after unpacking. We will look at both the standard tools and hidden features of the system.
Analysis of resource consumption in MIUI settings
The first step is always to diagnose, and before you delete files or close apps, you need to understand what consumes your resource. Xiaomi’s shell has a powerful statistics tool built in that is often ignored.
Go to Settings → About Phone → Memory. This shows general information, but more details are in Settings → Advanced Settings → Usage Statistics. This is where you can see which apps and services have taken up the most RAM space in the last 24 hours or 7 days.
Look at the apps that you don't use very often, but they're at the top of the list, and that's a clear sign of unoptimized code or background activity, and system processes can also be very large, but you shouldn't touch them without understanding the consequences.
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If you see an app that hasn’t been used in days but is in the top of RAM consumption, force it to stop through the app menu.
Often users are unaware that heavy launchers or weather widgets can eat up hundreds of megabytes. Visual effects require constant computation, which loads the processor and fills the cache in RAM.
Standard cleaning tools and their effectiveness
Each Xiaomi smartphone has a Security app preinstalled, a central resource management hub that goes far beyond just a simple antivirus, and the Cleanup tab allows you to quickly make room, but many are unaware of the additional features.
Press the "Clean" button in the security application. Once you've finished scanning the files, you'll see a "Speed Up" button or rocket icon, and you'll press it to force the background processes to close, but automatic cleaning isn't always effective, because the system immediately starts the necessary services anew.
For more in-depth customization, go to Settings → Advanced Settings → Memory Acceleration. You can activate the automatic resource release function when space is scarce. The algorithm will decide which processes to close to run the application you want.
Also check your autostart settings. Go to Settings → Apps → Permissions → Autostart. Turn off this feature for all programs that don’t need to run all the time (such as stores, games, or rarely used social networks) to prevent them from downloading to RAM immediately after you turn on your phone.
Developer settings for advanced users
The hidden developer menu contains controls that allow direct control over RAM, and to activate this mode, you need to click 7 times on the build number in the About Phone menu, and after the message "You became a developer" appears, a new item will appear in the advanced settings.
In the developer menu, find the Apps section, where the critical option is Background Process Limit, the default is Standard Limit, but you can limit the number of applications running simultaneously, setting a limit of 2-3 processes can drastically reduce the load on older models with 4 GB of RAM or less.
Another important setting is “Do Not Stay Activated,” which if enabled, will destroy the app as soon as the user leaves the screen, which guarantees maximum free memory, but can negatively affect multitasking and navigation.
What is “Windows Animation” and how does it affect memory?
Be careful with the option “Run Google Play Services.” In some versions of MIUI, turning it off helps, but in global firmware, it can lead to unstable push notifications. Experiment with these settings only if you understand what a particular process is responsible for.
Managing Autoboot and Background Activity
Chinese manufacturers, including Xiaomi, use their own power-saving mechanisms that sometimes conflict with Android’s standard behavior. Apps can fall asleep incorrectly while they remain in memory.
Go to Settings → Battery and Performance → App Activity Control. For every important application, you can choose a strategy: No Limits, Energy Saving, or Hard Savings. Selecting a Hard Saving mode for instant messengers can lead to messaging loss, but for games and tools, it’s ideal.
Also worth noting is the Memory Extension feature, which uses some of the internal flash memory as virtual RAM, which can help if you don't have enough physical RAM, but the virtual memory speed is lower.
| Mode of work | Impact on RAM | Impact on the battery | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|
| No restrictions. | High consumption | Quick discharge. | Messengers, mail. |
| Saving energy | Average consumption | Optimally. | Social media, browsers |
| Savings are hard | Minimum | Maximum savings | Games, rare utilities |
| Intellectual | Adaptive. | Balance | System applications |
Regularly checking the list of running applications helps to identify “infringers.” If you see a calculator or voice recorder consuming 200 MB, this is an excuse to delete and reinstall the application.
Use debugging over USB and ADB commands
For users willing to go beyond standard settings, there is a method of cleaning through a computer, and an ADB connection allows you to give commands to the system directly, bypassing interface constraints, which is especially useful for removing system debris.
To start, you need to enable debugging over USB in the developer menu and connect the smartphone to the PC. The computer should have a minimum set of ADB tools installed. After connecting, enter a command to check the connection:
adb devicesIf the device is displayed in the list, you can use commands to stop heavy processes. For example, the command adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 name.packet allows you to completely disable the system application that can not be removed in the usual way, this will not only free up space on the disk, but also reduce the load on the RAM, as the process will stop starting.
☑️ Preparation for ADB-manipulation
There are also special scripts for Xiaomi that automatically disable MIUI advertising services (Msa, Daemon, etc.) that often hang in the background and consume resources, but using such scripts requires caution, as you can disrupt the app store.
⚠️ Note: Disabling system packages through ADB Before removing or freezing any system component, make sure you know its exact purpose.
Radical measures: resetting and reflashing
If the software methods don't work and the phone keeps braking even after cleaning, there may be some critical errors or file conflicts in the system, in which case a full reset helps. Be sure to back up the data before doing so.
Resetting via Settings → About Phone → Resetting will return the device to factory status. This deletes all user data and applications, leaving the clean system. Often, this is the action that returns the phone to the speed of a new device.
A more complex but effective method is flashing: installing a global firmware version instead of a Chinese one, or switching from MIUI to HyperOS (or vice versa if the new version is heavier), can change the algorithms of working with memory. Clean Install via the Mi Flash Tool is preferable to an air update.
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Full reset to factory settings is the most effective way to deal with software “blockages” of memory, if the hardware is working.
After reset, take your time to install all the applications at once, install them one at a time, and observe the behavior of the system, which will help identify the specific application that is causing performance problems.