Modern Xiaomi and Redmi smartphones are equipped with impressive amounts of RAM, but even 12 or 16 GB are sometimes busy with background processes, which leads to noticeable slowdowns. Users often notice that applications are unloaded from memory faster than usual, and games begin to restart when switching between tabs. This is due to the peculiarities of the MIUI and HyperOS shell, which aggressively manage resources in an attempt to save battery power, but sometimes overstep the line of reasonable.
When the system eats all the available memory, it can be caused not only by a lot of open applications, but also software errors, accumulated cache or malfunctioning services Google. RAM cleaning is not just a one-time procedure, but a set of optimization measures that will allow your device to work more stable.
Before you start taking drastic measures like resetting, try soft optimization methods that are safe for user data. Understanding how Xiaomi allocates resources will help you avoid unnecessary actions and prolong the life of the gadget. Below are proven ways that actually work on current versions of firmware.
⚠️ Warning: Forced shutdown of system processes can cause an interface to run in an unstable way. Use advanced settings only if you understand what a particular process is responsible for.
MIUI Memory Cleanup Tools
The easiest and safest way to free up resources is to use the built-in Security app, which is pre-installed on all devices in the brand and has access to system APIs to complete processes correctly. Clicking the Clean button in the memory widget not only closes applications, but also redistributes priorities for the active window.
But standard cleaning is often not effective enough when heavy services are hanging in the background, and for deeper work, you need to go to the settings of the security application itself, where you can set up automatic cleaning when you reach a certain filling threshold, which is especially true for models with 4 or 6 GB of RAM.
- 📱 Open the Security app and click on the Acceleration icon».
- ⚙️ Go to acceleration settings (cog in the corner) and turn on “Auto-acceleration».
- 🔒 Activate blocking of important applications so that they do not unload.
- 🔄 Set up the automatic cleaning interval in the background.
It's important to understand that manual memory cleaning isn't always helpful. Android is designed to keep frequently used applications in memory for quick start-up. If you constantly clean RAM manually, the processor spends more energy restarting applications than keeping them in the background.
⚠️ Warning: Do not use third-party "Task Killers" from the Play Market. MIUI and may cause cyclical reboots of services.
Autostart and Background Process Management
One of the main reasons for the lack of free memory is the excessive number of applications running with the system. Unlike pure Android, the MIUI shell allows applications to run in the background more freely, which sometimes leads to “inflated” occupied RAM. Autostart control is the first step to optimization.
To access these settings, you need to go to the application section. Here you will see a list of programs that are authorized to run themselves. Disabling this feature for instant messengers can cause notifications to delay, so approach this selectively. Social networks and games can be safely restricted.
Also worth paying attention to is the floating window function: applications that run in floating mode take up full memory even when folded up, closing unused floating windows instantly frees up a significant amount of resources.
- 🚫 Go to Settings. → Annexes → Autostart and turn off the excess.
- 📉 Use “Advanced Settings” to limit background activity.
- 🔔 Check the permissions to display on top of other windows in suspicious apps.
- 🗑️ Remove unused system applications through ADB (advanced).
☑️ Auto-start check
There's also a hidden setup that allows you to limit the number of background processes, which is on the developer menu, and allows you to severely limit the number of simultaneously active applications, which can be useful for older models, but on new devices can cause incorrect multitasking.
Configure the developer parameters for RAM
For users who aren't afraid to experiment, the developer menu gives access to a fine-tuning of memory management, and you can find options that affect how the system handles background tasks and animations. The developer menu is hidden by default, but it's safe to activate.
To activate the menu, you have to click seven times on the build number in the About section, and when the notification appears, a new item will appear in the additional settings, and that's where the key performance controls are.
| Parameter | Recommended value | Impact on RAM |
|---|---|---|
| Limit of background processes | No more than 4 processes | Strict limitation of the number of working applications |
| Window animation | 0.5x or Retraction. | Visually speeds up work, reduces the load on the GPU |
| Not to keep up the action | Off. | When switched on, it destroys activity immediately after exit. |
| MIUI background restriction | No restrictions (for important ones) | Allows critical applications to work in the background |
The "Do Not Save Action" option is particularly noteworthy, because if you turn it on, the system will destroy the activity of the application as soon as the user leaves it, which radically frees up memory, but makes navigation jittery, since the applications will be constantly restarted from scratch.
How to reset the developer settings?
Another useful option is to turn off animations. While this doesn't directly free up megabytes of RAM, it reduces the GPU load and makes the interface subjectively more responsive, creating the illusion of freeing up resources.
Memory usage analysis through ADB
To get a deep look at what's eating up your RAM, you can use USB debugging and a computer, and ADB command line utilities can get detailed statistics that you can't get on a normal interface, and that's a professional diagnostic method.
Connecting your smartphone to a PC with Android Debug Bridge installed, you can request a process list sorted by memory consumption. the adb shell dumpsys meminfo team will give you a detailed report of how much memory each application and system service takes up.
adb shell dumpsys meminfo | grep -E "Total|Native|Dalvik"Using this information, you can identify voracious applications that incorrectly free resources, often social media apps or poorly optimized games, and once the culprit is found, they can be forcibly stopped or removed.
- 💻 Connect your phone to your computer in debugging mode.
- 🖥️ Start the terminal and enter a command to collect statistics.
- 🔍 Find processes with abnormally high consumption (Private Dirty).
- 🛑 Stop the process by setting up or ADB.
⚠️ Attention: When working with ADB Be careful with the command am kill.Killing critical system processes can lead to a device reboot or bootloop.
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Continuous monitoring of memory through ADB You can use the watch command: `watch -n 1 adb shell dumpsys meminfo`. It will update the data every second in real time.
Optimization of the browser and cache
Web browsers are among the major consumers of RAM. Each open tab is a separate process that takes up space in RAM. On mobile devices with limited resources, this becomes critical.
It is recommended to regularly clean up site data and browser cache. Chrome or the built-in Mi Browser browser has a “Light” or traffic saving feature, which also helps reduce memory consumption when loading heavy pages.
In addition, many applications store huge amounts of temporary files in cache. Although the cache is designed to speed up work, its proliferation to gigabytes can slow down the system. Regularly cleaning the cache through storage settings is a good habit.
It's also worth checking if apps use Incognito mode or save a lot of these forms. Clearing up the history and data of sites often solves the problem of sudden brakes when surfing.
Extended memory (Virtual RAM) on new models
Xiaomi’s new MIUI 13/14 and HyperOS models have a feature called “Memory Extension” that allows you to reserve some of your internal flash memory (ROM) and use it as RAM. This is SWAP technology.
You can activate this feature in the "Memory Extension" section of the basic settings, the system will suggest adding 2, 3, 4 or even 7 GB of virtual memory, after turning on, you will need to reboot the device, which can help if the physical memory is full, but the speed will be lower than that of real RAM.
Using virtual memory has its pros and cons, on the one hand, it allows you to keep more applications in the background, on the other hand, constant writing to flash memory can theoretically accelerate its wear and tear, although for modern UFS 3.1 drives this is not so critical.
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The memory expansion function is only effective if you have at least 10-15 GB of internal memory available, and it won't work on a full storage.
If you notice that after turning on this feature, the phone started to run slower or warm up more, it is better to turn off the extension.For devices with 8 GB of physical memory or more, this feature is often redundant and may even reduce overall performance due to lower data access speeds.