How to see memory on the phone Xiaomi Redmi: the complete guide

Owners of Xiaomi and Redmi smartphones sooner or later face a situation where the device starts to run slower, and notifications of space shortages appear with alarming regularity. Understanding how exactly the space is distributed inside your gadget is the first step to optimizing its operation. Many users confuse RAM and embedded storage (ROM), although these components perform completely different functions and require different approaches to management.

Android’s MIUI or HyperOS shell provides deep tools for analyzing disk space, but they are often hidden from the eyes of the average user in the depth of the menu. Effective file management allows you not only to free up gigabytes, but also to extend the life of the drive, preventing it from critical overflow. In this article, we will discuss in detail all ways of viewing memory, from standard settings to advanced engineering menus.

Differences between RAM and ROM in Xiaomi smartphones

Before you start cleaning, you need to understand the memory architecture of your device. RAM is a fast-acting storage that temporarily hosts running applications and processes of the system. It is cleared when you restart or close programs. It is the amount of RAM that determines how many applications can run simultaneously without rebooting.

By contrast, embedded memory (ROM) is a permanent storage system, similar to a hard drive in a computer, which stores the operating system, installed applications, photos, videos, music and documents. When you see a message "Memory is full," it is almost always about a lack of space in the ROM, not in RAM.

Modern Redmi models, such as the Redmi Note 13 or Xiaomi 14, use fast UFS storage standards that far outperform older eMMC drives in read and write speeds. However, even a fast drive starts to run slower if it is more than 85-90% full.

⚠️ Warning: Never fill your device’s internal memory to a state where less than 1GB is free. This can cause your smartphone to reboot cyclically or fail to install critical security updates.

Understanding this difference will help you interpret the data you see in the settings correctly. If switching between applications is slowing down, RAM is a problem. If photos are opened long or applications are not installed, the problem is ROM.

Checking the internal memory through standard settings

The easiest and most affordable way to find out how much space is occupied on your Xiaomi Redmi is in the standard settings menu.This method does not require installing third-party software and gives a basic idea of the storage occupancy. To access this information, you need to go to Settings → About Phone → Memory (the path may vary slightly depending on the version of MIUI).

In this section, you'll see a visualized scale that shows different colors for file categories: apps, images, video, audio, and system files. Clicking on any category, the system suggests you move to a more detailed analysis or start a built-in cleanup. Detailing the data quickly allows you to find the "eaters" of space, which are often long-forgotten videos or social media cache.

However, a standard viewer does not always show the real picture, and some system folders and files can be hidden from the user to prevent the accidental deletion of critical components, so these figures should be taken as indicative, especially if the actual occupied space does not coincide with the sum of visible files.

It's important to look at "Other" or "System Files." Often, this is where the remnants of deleted applications, error logs, and temporary update files, which take up gigabytes of usable space, are hidden, and regular monitoring of this partition helps keep the file system in order.

Using the Security Application for Analysis

Each Xiaomi smartphone has a Security system app, which is a powerful tool not only for virus protection but also for memory management. Unlike standard settings, this tool can scan the device for junk files, duplicates and large files that can be safely deleted.

To start the analysis, open the application and select Clean up. The system automatically scans all memory partitions and gives a report. In the Deep Cleanup section, you can find categories of files that are usually ignored during a quick cleanup: old ones. APK-installer files, adware packages and unused applications.

The big file analysis feature is worth noting, and it will build a list of the largest objects on your disk, sorted by size, which allows you to instantly find a forgotten movie in 4K resolution or an archive of photos that takes half a gigabyte, and decide whether to delete or move it to the cloud.

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Use the “Cache Clear” feature in the Security app once a week to delete temporary browser and application files without affecting important data.

The app also shows which programs consume the most resources and space. If you see that the messenger takes 10 GB, even though you haven't downloaded as many files, then it's time to clean its internal cache through the settings of the application itself.

Viewing Memory Through File Explorer

The standard file manager Explorer on Xiaomi offers another level of detail. Going to the Storage Analyzer section (usually located in the "three dots" menu or on the app's home screen), you will get a color map of memory occupancy. This tool visualizes the data in a diagram where each sector corresponds to a specific folder or file type.

The unique thing about the analyzer is that it allows you to "fall" inside any folder right from the diagram. You can see that the Android/data folder has grown to an exorbitant size because of the cache of games or the maps of the navigator. Manual control through the conductor gives you more control than automatic cleaners, because you decide what to delete.

And you can sort files by size, and if you select size and filter only files larger than 100MB, you'll instantly get a list of candidates for deletion, which is especially effective for finding forgotten browser downloads or saved statuses from WhatsApp.

When using a Explorer, be careful with the folders of the system. Deleting files from the root directories can lead to unstable interface operation. Always check the contents of the folder before cleaning if you are not sure about the purpose of the files.

Monitoring of RAM (RAM) in real time

To check the load of RAM in Xiaomi, there is a hidden but very useful tool — a floating memory window, which allows you to see in real time how much RAM is free, and clean it with a single click, which is especially useful for owners of devices with 4 GB or 6 GB of RAM.

To activate this tool, go to Settings → Advanced Settings → Floating memory window and switch on. After that, you will always see a small widget showing the percentage of free memory on the screen, pressing it forcibly closes the background processes and frees up resources.

Memory extension is another feature available in newer versions of MIUI. It allows you to use part of the embedded storage (ROM) as virtual RAM. While it doesn't give you the performance boost comparable to physical RAM, it helps the system keep more applications in the background. You can find this option by Settings → Additional Settings → Expansion of Memory.

⚠️ Attention: Constant activation of the function "Memory Extension" increases the number of cycles of overwriting the built-in drive, which theoretically can reduce its life over a very long distance.

Using a memory widget helps control voracious applications. If you notice that after running a certain game or program, free memory becomes critically scarce, it may be that the application has a memory leak or is poorly optimized.

Hidden sections and engineering menu

For advanced users who want to see absolutely all partitions of the disk, including system, reserved for recovery and bootloader, there is access through the engineering menu or ADB. Standard means to see hidden partitions /system, /vendor or /cache in the form of separate volumes will not work, since Android masks them as a single file system.

However, you can get detailed statistics through the debugging menu. Enable the developer mode (7 times click on the build number in Settings → About phone), then go to Settings → Advanced Settings → For developers. Here you can find statistics of running services that will show how much RAM each process consumes in detail.

A deeper analysis is available through a computer using the ADB command. Connecting the phone and enabling USB debugging, you can enter an adb shell df-h command that will display a table of all mounted partitions with their real size and occupied space. This is the only way to see if some system process has not "eaten" the entire data partition.

adb shell dumpsys meminfo

This team will produce a detailed report on the use of RAM by each process running on the system, and an analysis of this report reveals applications that mismanage memory and do not free up resources after closing.

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Engineering diagnostics are only needed if there is a suspected system failure, and standard MIUI tools are sufficient for everyday use.

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