How to Add an App to Xiaomi Exceptions: The Complete Guide

Owners of Xiaomi, Redmi and Poco smartphones often face aggressive optimization of the MIUI or HyperOS system. The operating shell seeks to maximize battery life, tightly controlling background processes. This leads to the fact that messengers stop sending notifications, activity trackers do not count steps, and music players become silent when the screen is turned off.

The solution is to add the necessary programs to the exception list, which tells the system that a particular application should work without restrictions, even if it consumes a lot of energy or actively uses the Internet in the background, and without the right setup, you risk missing an important call or not getting a bank transfer notification.

In this article, we’ll take a look at how to set up auto-run and manage power, where Android’s hidden settings lie, and how to keep important services safe from forced shutdown, and understanding these mechanisms will allow you to turn your smartphone into a predictable tool, rather than a notification lottery.

⚠️ Warning: Do not add heavy games or little-known applications from questionable sources to the exceptions.This can lead to a critical battery discharge in a matter of hours and overheating of the device.

Why the system closes applications in the background

The fundamental reason lies in the philosophy of the MIUI shell. Engineers have bet on maximum energy efficiency, implementing rigid algorithms Battery Saver. If the system sees that the application is not active on the screen, but consumes the resources of the processor or network, it marks it as “problematic”.

Unlike pure Android, where background management is more liberal, the rule is “guilty until proven otherwise.” Standard settings often do not allow the user to immediately understand why their favorite navigator stopped plotting a route.

There are several levels of control that apply to programs:

• 🔋 Background activity restriction – the app cannot perform actions when the screen is off.
• 🚫 Auto-start lock – the program does not start with the phone on.
• 📉 Data Use Restrictions – Banning the transmission of information over a mobile network or Wi-Fi in the background.
• ❄️ Process Freeze – Completely shutting down the application code until the next manual start.

The user must manually remove these restrictions for critical services, otherwise a smart but overzealous system will constantly choke the necessary processes to save a couple of percent of the charge.

Setup of Auto-Run Applications

The first step to stable operation is to set up autoruns, a basic level without which the app simply cannot run on its own after rebooting the smartphone or cleaning up the memory. Many users mistakenly believe that it is enough to install the program, but in the Xiaomi ecosystem this is not enough.

To access the settings, you need to go to the Safety app (green zipper icon). Inside, find the AutoRun section. This shows a list of all the programs installed. Most of them are disabled by default, which is normal practice for saving resources, but for instant messengers and working tools this is unacceptable.

⚠️ Warning: Enabling auto-run for dozens of apps can significantly increase the boot time of the system after turning on the phone.

Here’s what the setup process looks like:

• 📱 Open the Security Menu → Auto-start.
• 🔍 Find the right app in the list (for example, Telegram or WhatsApp).
• ✅ Activate the switch opposite the program name.
• 🔄 Repeat the procedure for all important services.

Once you have auto-run, the system will know that the application is allowed to start without the user, but this does not give you complete freedom of action, you need to configure the next parameter, which will be discussed later.

Battery management and energy saving

The most important step is to set up an energy saving profile for a particular application, which is where you decide whether a program will run in the background or die 15 minutes after you turn off the screen. In the latest versions of HyperOS and MIUI 14, this item is often hidden in the back of the menu.

To find the right setting, go to Settings → Applications → All apps. Select the program you are interested in from the list. Find the item "Saving charge" (or "Battery Consumption"). By default, the value "Background constraint" is there, which is causing problems.

You need to change your strategy to No Limits. This is a key parameter that prevents the system from forcibly shutting down the process, and only after that step will the navigators be able to voice warnings about turns when the screen is off, and the smartwatches can synchronize the data.

Let’s look at the battery options:

• 🟢 No restrictions – the application works always, consumes the battery as you want.
• 🟡 Background restriction is the standard mode, the system can close the application if it considers it necessary.
• 🔴 Strict mode – the application can not work in the background at all, only with an open window.

Also, remember to check the Start in the background in the same app settings menu. There should be a green switch on there. If it's off, no other settings will help - the system will block background activity at the kernel level.

Affixing applications to memory

Another effective method is to lock the application into RAM, which sticks the program window to the list of running tasks, protecting it from automatically cleaning it when there is a lack of RAM. When you unplug all the windows, the attached application will remain hanging.

To do this, open the menu of running applications (swipe from the bottom up and hold or menu button). Find the card of the desired application. Usually, just pull the card down (or click on the lock in the corner, depending on the version of MIUI) until the lock icon appears.

Now, when you clean the memory with a Chronicle button or a swipe, this application won't be closed. This is especially useful for:

• 🎵 Music players so that the music doesn't stop.
• 📞 Messaging for instantaneous call reception.
• 🏃 Activity trackers for accurate step counting.

⚠️ Attention: Memory retention is not a panacea; if the system decides that an application consumes too much resources, it may close it even with a lock, but the probability of this is greatly reduced.

Special permissions and access to data

Sometimes the problem isn't the battery, but the lack of permissions to work with the network or other components, and MIUI has a separate permissions manager that can block access to Wi-Fi or mobile data in the background.

Go to Settings → Apps → Permissions → Network (or through the Security → Permissions app). Make sure your app ticks against the “Wi-Fi” and “Mobile Network” boxes. It’s also worth checking the “Autonomous Work” section if it’s available in your firmware version.

Some specific tasks, like recording a screen or controlling a smart home, require special features. → Advanced settings → Specialty. You need to find an app and let it work.

Table of the main permits for stable operation:

Additional settings for advanced users

For those who want to be 100% sure, there is a hidden engineering menu scale called MIUI Optimization, but it's not recommended for ordinary users to turn it off, because it can disrupt the interface.

If you use third-party launchers or automation tools (e.g. Tasker or MacroDroid, Termux), they require ADB access or special permissions via a computer.

It's important to remember that Extended Memory is a feature that, if enabled, can more actively unload applications from physical RAM to virtual RAM, which slows them down. For mission-critical applications, it's sometimes temporary to turn off the expansion in the About Phone settings.

💡

Use the Battery widget on your desktop for quick monitoring, and if you see that the application you want to use has disappeared from your work list or has gone 0% over a long period of time, it's been killed by the system and your settings have gone wrong.

Frequent problems and their solution

Even after all the settings, there can be situations where the app is not stable, often due to cache or version conflict. If adding Xiaomi exceptions didn’t help, try clearing the app data (not to be confused with deleting it).

It's also worth checking if you have a firmware beta installed, and in test builds, bugs with background processes are more common, so waiting for an update or rolling back to a stable version helps.

If nothing works, there's a radical method, which is to reset your phone, but before you do that, make sure you back up, and often the problem is solved by simply updating the most problematic app to the latest version from Google Play.

💡

The comprehensive approach (Sunset + No battery limitations + Memory fastener) ensures that the application will work 99% of the time on any version of MIUI and HyperOS.

Questions and Answers (FAQ)