How to Free RAM on Xiaomi Redmi 9A: The Complete Guide

Xiaomi Redmi 9A, with its modest 2-3GB of RAM, often faces problems of slowing down and hanging, especially after a year of active use, and the reason lies not only in the small amount of RAM, but also in the peculiarities of MIUI, Xiaomi’s proprietary shell, which aggressively caches application data. Unlike flagship models, the budget Redmi 9A can not afford the “luxury” of automatic optimization without loss in performance.

In this article, we will discuss 7 proven ways to free RAM, including hidden MIUI 12/13/14 settings, work with background processes and even hardware tricks for owners of the version with 2 GB of RAM. Importantly, all methods are tested on current firmware (including MIUI Global 14.0.4) and do not require root rights. If your smartphone “slows” when opening the camera or switching between applications, you are on the right track.

Why is Redmi 9A “suffocating” from a lack of RAM?

The MediaTek Helio G25 processor paired with 2-3 GB of RAM is a classic example of a bottleneck. Even with minimal load, the system has to close the background applications to free up resources, but the problem is exacerbated by the fact that:

• 📱 MIUI Reserves up to 500-700 MB of RAM for system processes (including Xiaomi Cloud and Mi Security services), leaving the user with crumbs.
• 🔄 Automatic cache cleaning works inefficiently: instead of freeing up memory, it often restarts applications, which only increases the load.
• 🎮 Games and social networks (such as Free Fire or Facebook) “eat” up to 1 GB of RAM each, even in a folded state.
• 🔋 Energy-saving modes limit background activity, but at the same time block optimization of memory.

In practice, this means that even after you manually close all apps through the recent ones, the system can show a RAM usage of 80-90%. And that's not a mistake - that's how the Android Go architecture (on which Redmi 9A is based) works.

Method 1: Manually closing background processes (correct method)

Most users are used to clicking on the Close All button in the Recent Apps menu, but this doesn't free up RAM, it just removes tasks from the list. To really clear the memory, you need to work with background processes through the Developer Settings.

Instructions:

1. Activate Developer Mode: Go to Settings → About Phone → MIUI version and press 7 times in a row.
2. Back to Settings → Additionally. → For developers.
3. Find Process Limitation and select Process Maximum 2 in the background (for 2 GB of RAM) or Process Maximum 3 (for 3 GB).
4. In the same menu, turn off Windows animation and transition animation – this will reduce the load on the processor.

⚠️ Attention: Limiting processes to 1-2 could cause notifications from messengers (WhatsApp, Telegram) to arrive with a delay. 9A — 2 process at 2 GB of RAM and 3 process at 3 GB.

Activate Developer Mode |

Set process limits (2 for 2 GB of RAM, 3 for 3 GB)|

Turn off animation of windows and transitions |

Reboot your phone to apply changes-->

Method 2: Cleaning the cache of system applications

MIUI system applications (e.g. Mi Video, Mi Music, Browser) often take up hundreds of megabytes of RAM, even if you're not using them, and can be cleaned without affecting the system.

How to do this:

1. Go to Settings → Applications → Application Management.
2. Click on the three dots in the upper right corner and select Show all processes.
3. Sort the list by the size of the memory occupied (click on Memory).
4. Select system applications (e.g. com.miui.video, com.android.browser) and click Clear Cache.

⚠️ Note: Do not clear the cache of Google Play Services and Services and feedback apps – this may cause Google account and push notifications to crash.

💡

If the app starts to work unstable after cleaning the cache, restart the phone. The system will restore the necessary data automatically.

Method 3: Disable Auto-Run Unnecessary Applications

Redmi 9A by default allows most applications to autorun when your phone is turned on and back in the background. This is one of the main reasons why RAM clogs in just a few hours. Fortunately, MIUI has a built-in tool to control autorun.

Step-by-step:

1. Open Settings → Applications → Application Management.
2. Select the Auto Start tab.
3. Turn off auto-start for all applications except: 📱 Messengers (WhatsApp, Telegram) 🔔 System Services (Google Play Services) 🔒 Security Applications (Mi Security)

Permits

Working in the background

After this, RAM will be released automatically when you close applications, for example, if you played PUBG Mobile and then closed the game, the system will not keep its processes in memory.

Method 4: Using Lite versions of applications

Many popular applications have lightweight versions (Lite) optimized for devices with low RAM.

• 📘 Facebook Lite instead of Facebook (saves up to 300MB of RAM)
• 📷 Instagram Lite instead of the standard Instagram (saves up to 200 MB)
• 🎵 Spotify Lite instead of Spotify (saving up to 150MB)
• 💬 Messenger Lite instead of Facebook Messenger (saving up to 250MB)

Switching to Lite can free up to 1-1.5 GB of RAM in peak loads, for example, when you open Facebook Lite and Instagram Lite simultaneously, memory consumption is reduced from 1.2 GB to 400-500 MB.

Where to download:

• The official Lite versions are available on Google Play (see “[app name] Lite” for search).
• For Redmi 9A, apps from the Android Go category (for example, YouTube Go, Gmail Go) will also be suitable.

💡

Lite versions of applications not only save RAM, but also reduce battery consumption by 15-20% due to a simplified interface and disabled background processes.

Method 5: Optimize MIUI with Hidden Settings

MIUI hides several useful features that can significantly improve memory management, one of which is Performance Mode, which limits background activity and prioritizes resources for an active application.

How to turn on:

1. Go to Settings → Battery and Performance → Performance Mode.
2. Choose Balance (for everyday use) or Performance (for gaming).
3. Activate the option to Clean Memory when you lock the screen (hidden in Settings → Additional → Clean up).

Another hidden tool is Deep Cleanup, which removes not only the cache, but also temporary files of system processes:

1. Open the Security app (Security).
2. Click on the Cleaning → Deep Cleaning.
3. Select Memory Cleanup and confirm the action.

⚠️ Note: Do not use Deep Clean more than 1 time per week – this can cause system services such as Google Play Services to crash.

Method 6: Hardware tricks for versions with 2 GB of RAM

If your Redmi 9A is only equipped with 2 GB of RAM, standard methods may not work.

1. Using microSD as a RAM extension (Swap file): 📁 Install a class memory card UHS-I (Minimum Class 10). 🔧 Download the app ROEHSOFT RAM-EXPANDER (SWAP) Google Play. 🔄 Create a swap file size of 512 MB-1 GB (no more!).

⚠️ Warning: This method increases memory card wear and tear. Do not use it constantly - only in emergency cases (for example, to run heavy games).

Disabling one processor core

The Helio G25 processor has 8 cores, but only 4 are used in everyday tasks. Disabling the excess cores will reduce the load on RAM:

adb shell su -c "echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu4/online"


adb shell su -c "echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu5/online"

🔹 Root rights are required, and without them, the team won't work.

For owners of the 2GB version, it is also recommended to disable the MIUI download animation (accelerates the system start-up by 10-15%):

adb shell settings put global window_animation_scale 0


adb shell settings put global transition_animation_scale 0




adb shell settings put global animator_duration_scale 0

Method 7: Extreme measures - reset to factory settings

If all of these methods didn’t work, and the phone still slows down when you open 2-3 apps, then the last option is hard reset. This is a radical method, but it is guaranteed to return the Redmi 9A to a factory state where RAM is not clogged with garbage.

How to do the reset correctly:

1. Save all important data (photos, contacts, messages) to Google Drive or your computer.
2. Go to Settings → About the phone → Reset settings.
3. Select to erase all data (reset to factory).
4. After reset, don’t restore data from backup – install apps manually to avoid carrying “garbage.”

⚠️ Warning: After resetting the first 2-3 days, the phone may be slower than usual - that's normal. MIUI adapts to your usage habits (trains caching algorithms).

If RAM problems persist after reset, this may indicate hardware wear (especially for devices older than 2-3 years), in which case only a replacement of the motherboard will help.

FAQ: Frequent questions about RAM on Redmi 9A