How to check the activity of applications on Android Xiaomi: hidden tools and ADB-team

Xiaomi, Redmi and Poco smartphones based on MIUI Often face the problem of excessive activity of background applications, which leads to rapid battery discharge, overheating or unnecessary consumption of mobile traffic. Unlike pure Android, Xiaomi’s firmware hides some of its monitoring tools, but offers unique features like Security and Optimization. In this article, we’ll look at all the available ways, from standard settings to hidden ones. ADB-commands and third-party utilities.

The thing about MIUI is that it aggressively manages the background, but sometimes it works against the user: messengers stop receiving notifications, and games suddenly shut down. To figure out which application is to blame for the problems, you don't just look at Settings → Applications. You need deeper tools, and we show you where to look.

1. MIUI built-in tools: Security section

The easiest way to check app activity is to use Xiaomi's built-in Security Monitor, which shows not only battery consumption, but also hidden activity in the background, including auto-start and screen wake-ups.

1. Open the Settings. → Security.
2. Select Security Monitor (or Optimize in newer versions of MIUI).
3. Go to the Application Activity or Battery Management tab.

Here you'll see:

• 🔋 Battery consumption by application (including background consumption).
• ⏳ Activity time – how much the app worked on the screen and in the background.
• 📶 Mobile traffic (if monitoring is enabled).
• ⚡ Auto-Start – What programs are running when your phone is turned on.

Note the high-powered apps in the Background Activity column, which are most often to blame for battery life, for example, if Facebook or TikTok are 30 percent of the background consumption with minimal usage, they should be limited.

⚠️ Attention: B MIUI 14 and later, the Security Monitor section may be hidden. To return it, clear the Security app data in the settings or update it via Google Play.

2. Section "Battery" and hidden schedules of activity

Settings menu → The battery hides an extended statistic that many users miss, and you can see not only the percentage of consumption, but also the timeline of activity:

1. Go to Settings → Battery → Battery usage statistics.
2. Click on the graph at the top of the screen and the detail will open by the clock.
3. Scroll down to the list of apps and tap on any one to see the Details.

You'll find the details:

• 📊 Schedule CPU — how the app loaded the processor.
• 🔄 Awakenings – how many times it wakes up your phone (a key parameter to save battery life).
• 📴 Mobile data/Wi-Fi — background traffic.

If the app wakes up your phone more than 50 times per hour (like WhatsApp or Telegram), it’s a sign of unoptimized background work, and then limiting the background through Settings → Applications → Battery Management will help.

3. ADB-Advanced analysis teams

For those who are ready to go beyond standard tools, Android Debug Bridge (ADB) It'll open up the hidden data. ADB can be obtained:

• 📁 Complete list of background services and their PID.
• ⚡ Wake Locks – What’s Keeping Your Phone from Sleeping.
• 🔄 Alarm Manager – scheduled tasks (a common cause of waking up).

To get started, install ADB Tools on your PC and connect your phone in debugging mode (Settings → About Phone → MIUI Version → 7 times tap to enable Developer Mode, then Settings → Additional → Developers → Debugging over USB).

The main commands for activity analysis:

List of all working processes


adb shell ps -A | grep -E 'u0_a|system'




Watch wake locks (what wakes up your phone)



adb shell dumpsys power | grep -i "mHoldPartial"




List of planned tasks (alarm)



adb shell dumpsys alarm | grep -E "Alarm|PendingIntent"




Monitoring the use of CPUs by application



adb shell top -m 10 -t

If you see lines like mHoldPartial=WorkSource{...com.facebook.katana} in the dumpsys power output, it means Facebook is blocking the phone from going to sleep, so the solution is to manually limit the application's background activity.

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To maintain the conclusion ADB In the file for analysis, use the command: adb shell dumpsys power > power_log.txt. This will help you track problems for a long time.

4 Third-party utilities: BetterBatteryStats and AccuBattery

If the built-in MIUI tools seem inadequate, specialized applications will come to the rescue.

BetterBatteryStats without root rights requires one ADB-team:

adb -d shell pm grant com.asksven.betterbatterystats android.permission.BATTERY_STATS

The app will then show:

• 🔍 Partial wakelocks – What keeps your phone from falling asleep.
• ⏰ Alarms – scheduled tasks (e.g. sync Gmail every 15 minutes).
• 📱 Top apps by CPU — squat.

⚠️ Attention: B MIUI 14+ Some battery monitoring applications may show incorrect data due to system limitations. ADB or embedded tools.

5. Hidden MIUI settings: Developer mode and diagnostics

MIUI hides a few useful features in the Developer Settings to enable:

1. Go to Settings → About Phone → MIUI version.
2. Tap 7 times according to the version – a notification will appear You became a developer!
3. Back to Settings → Additionally. → For developers.

Please note here:

• 🔧 Inactive applications (Limit background processes) – allows you to manually close programs.
• 📡 Network activity (real-time mobile traffic) – shows which apps are using the internet right now.
• ⚡ Process Activity (Purpose List) – analogue of Windows Task Manager.

The process list is especially useful, and it shows all the services that are running, including system services, and if you see unknown processes like com.xiaomi.mipicks or com.miui.analytics, you can turn them off via ADB:

adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.xiaomi.mipicks

Enable the developer mode|Install ADB PC-only|Connect the phone in debugging mode|Start the adb device command to check the connection|Download BetterBatteryStats (optional)-->

6 Traffic Analysis: Who is consuming the internet in the background?

Many apps (especially social media and instant messengers) are actively using mobile traffic even when you are not using them, to identify the voracious inhabitants of the background:

1. Go to Settings. → SIM-maps and mobile networks → Using traffic.
2. Select a period (e.g., the last month).
3. Scroll down to the list of apps and sort by Background traffic.

Typical "culprits":

• 📱 Facebook/Instagram — before 500 MB per month on background activity.
• 💬 Telegram/WhatsApp — before 200 MB for media synchronization.
• 🎵 Spotify/Yandex Music - before 1 GB for track caching.

If traffic seems suspiciously high, check the app’s settings:

• Turn off autoplay video in social networks.
• Ban background downloading of media in messengers.
• Limit synchronization in roaming.

V MIUI 14+ There's a hidden feature called Traffic Optimization that automatically blocks background traffic for rarely used applications. → SIM-map → Optimize traffic and activate the switch.

System logs: how to read what's going on "under the hood"

For the most advanced users, you can view system logcats, where all the actions of the applications are recorded, which will help to identify:

• 🔄 Cyclical errors (e.g., Google Play Services crashes).
• ⚡ Unauthorized Screen Awakenings.
• 📡 Suspicious network activity.

To get the logs:

1. Connect your phone to your PC and start the ADB.
2. Enter the command:

adb logcat -d | findstr "WakeLock\|AlarmManager\|traffic"

Look for lines in the output like:

• Acquiring wake lock – the app blocks sleep mode.
• AlarmManager: Sending Alarm - A scheduled awakening.
• Network traffic: uid=10123 is network activity (uid can be mapped to an application via adb shell dumpsys package).

For convenience of analysis, logs can be saved to the file:

adb logcat -d > miui_logs.txt

⚠️ Attention: Reading logs requires knowledge of the basics of Android. Inexperienced users may miss critical errors or misinterpret data. To begin, try the simpler methods from this article.

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If the app consumes >10% battery in the background or wakes up the phone >30 times an hour, it's a sign of unoptimized work. Limit its activity through MIUI settings or uninstall.

FAQ: Frequent questions about app activity on Xiaomi