How to watch activity in applications on Xiaomi: hidden features MIUI

Xiaomi smartphone owners often face the challenge of checking what actions were performed on the device in their absence, which may be due to the desire to know how much time children spend in games, or the need to identify the background activity of suspicious programs that consume battery power. MIUI operating system and its global version of HyperOS provide users with powerful tools for monitoring, but they are often hidden in the depths of the system menus.

The concept of “activity” in the context of the Android shell Xiaomi is multifaceted. This is not only the history of running applications, but also the log of system events, screen usage statistics, and notification logs. Deep analysis of this data allows you not only to control screen time, but also to optimize the work of the gadget, disabling unnecessary processes. In this article, we will examine all the available ways to track activity from standard settings to engineering menus.

Using Digital Well-Being to Analyze Activity

The most accessible and informative tool for the average user is the built-in Digital Well-being service, which automatically collects statistics for each application installed, showing the frequency of launches and total usage time. To get into this section, you need to go to Settings → Digital Well-Being and Parental Control.

Here you'll see a pie chart showing the time distribution between different application categories. By clicking on a specific sector or selecting "Show all apps," you can get a detailed report. The system will show how many times a day you opened a messenger or social network, and at what time of day it happened most. Data visualization helps you quickly understand which programs are the main time eaters.

The functionality of this section is not limited to just looking at statistics, but can set time limits for specific applications or activate the “Sleep” mode, which limits the functionality of the device at night, which is especially useful for parents who want to monitor their child’s activity on the phone.

It is important to note that the data in Digital Well-being is not updated instantly, but with a slight delay. If you have just installed an application or reset statistics, the data can appear after a few minutes of active use. To get accurate data on background activity, you should use the Battery section, since it captures the work of processes in real time.

Checking the history of notifications and actions

Many users are unaware that MIUI keeps a detailed log of all incoming notifications, even if they have been accidentally swiped or deleted.This can be critical for recovering deleted confirmation codes or tracking activity in messengers. This archive is accessed through the Settings menu → Notifications and Status bar → Notification History.

This section stores a chronological list of all events, and you can see not only the text of the notification, but also the time it was received, as well as the name of the sender application, and if an application tried to covertly send data or show ads, traces of this often remain in the notification log.

However, it is worth considering that the notification history is not eternal. the system automatically cleans old records to avoid taking up space in memory. Usually data is only available for the last 24 hours, although in some versions of the firmware this period can be extended.

• 🔍 Text Search: At the top of the notification history screen, there is often a search bar to quickly find a specific message.
• 📱 Grouping: notifications from one application can be folded into a group that needs to be deployed by clicking.
• ⚙️ Storage settings: In some builds, you can configure the storage duration of the history in the notification settings menu.

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If you delete an important notification, try logging into the notification history immediately – the data may not have time to clear the system.

There is a nuance associated with access rights: some applications with a higher level of security (for example, banking) may not save their notifications in the system’s public log for privacy purposes, in which case activity can only be checked inside the application itself.

Monitoring battery consumption as an indicator of activity

One of the most effective ways to detect hidden activity is to analyze the battery consumption. If the program is running in the background, it consumes energy, and the system captures it. Go to Settings → Battery → Consumption (or click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of the battery screen).

This shows you a list of applications, sorted by the amount of energy you've used. Notice the "Background work" parameter. If an application you haven't used has used a significant percentage of its charge, it's been very active in the background, which is typical of navigators, fitness data trackers, or, at worst, miner viruses.

Xiaomi's system allows you to look at the behavior of each process in detail, and if you click on a particular application in the list, you'll see a graph of its activity over the past 6 or 24 hours, and you can clearly see the peaks of use corresponding to the launch or active time.

If you find an application with abnormally high background consumption that you did not run, it is worth checking its rights. Go to Settings → Apps → All apps, select a suspicious object and check the “Resolutions” section. Often unnecessary activity is caused by excessive rights to access geolocation or microphone.

Viewing newly opened apps and multitasking

The basic activity check level is the multitasking menu. On Xiaomi smartphones with gesture navigation, you swipe from the bottom up and hold your finger, and on the button, you press a square button, and here you see the "cards" of applications that were not completely closed.

But this list isn't always accurate. The system can automatically shut down long-unused RAM-free applications. So not having an app on the recent list doesn't guarantee it didn't work in the background before. There's a hidden menu of engineering tests for deeper analysis.

To access the advanced usage statistics, you can use the engineering menu code. In the Phone app, dial ##4636##. If the code works (on global firmware it can be disabled), the Testing menu will open. Select Usage statistics.

⚠️ Attention: The engineering test menu is for developers, and changing settings in sections not described in the manual can cause an unstable network or system.

The usage statistics section shows the exact time each component of the system and applications last started, which is raw data that was not filtered by the MIUI, and you can see even system services that are usually hidden from the user's eyes.

Analysis of mobile traffic usage

The activity of the application is often correlated with the consumption of Internet traffic. If the program was not online, it probably did not perform any significant actions. → SIM-maps and mobile networks → Traffic statistics.

Here is a list of applications broken down by data consumption over mobile network and Wi-Fi. A sharp jump in traffic from an application that should not use it (for example, a calculator or voice recorder) is an alarm signal. This can indicate hidden data transmission or advertising.

The system allows you to set the restrictions for each application separately, so you can disable the background connection for certain programs, which will not only stop their activity, but also save battery power, and you need to click on the name of the application in the traffic list and switch the slider "Background connection".

• 📉 Limits: Set a daily traffic limit to control overall activity.
• 🚫 Blocking: Turn off the internet completely for games that don’t require online mode.
• 📊 Period: Statistics are reset on the date specified in the settings (usually the 1st day of the month).

It's important to distinguish between background traffic and active traffic, and if an application is uploading updates in the background, it's going to be visible in the appropriate box, and persistent background activity on the network is the main sign of unoptimized or malware.

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The combination of high battery consumption and a large amount of data transferred in the background is a sure sign that the application needs to be checked or removed.

Parental Control and Family Link

If your goal is to track your child’s activity, the built-in MIUI may not be enough, as it shows general statistics rather than a detailed real-time report, and the best way to do this is to bundle with Google Family Link or Xiaomi’s specialty apps.

When you install Family Link on your child's phone and parent's phone, you get full access to your activity history, you can see which apps were running, how long a session lasted, and even lock the device remotely, a more powerful tool than the standard Digital Balance.

In the Xiaomi ecosystem, there is also a feature called Kids Space, which creates an isolated environment, in which the child has access only to approved applications, and all of his activity is logged and accessible to the owner of the main profile after entering a password.

⚠️ Note: When installing parental control applications, be sure to provide them with all the permissions you request (access to use, geolocation, list of applications.

Using third-party solutions to monitor activity requires caution: Make sure you only download apps from the official GetApps store or Google Play to avoid installing spyware under the guise of control programs.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)