How to remove online advertising on Xiaomi phone: the complete guide

Owners of Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphones often face intrusive ads that appear in standard apps and the browser, a consequence of the MIUI (and now HyperOS) branded shell, which uses a monetization model based on showing ads to users of budget devices. However, modern gadgets allow you to adjust the system quite flexibly, hiding or completely blocking unwanted content.

Banners can pop up in unexpected places, like when you unlock your screen, in your application folders, in Explorer, or even on top of the interface of other programs. Most often, system services like MSA (MIUI System Ads) or the built-in browser are the source of this data. Understanding how this mechanism works is the first step to creating a comfortable smartphone environment.

In this article, we’ll take a comprehensive approach to cleaning up the interface from digital noise. You’ll learn to disable system recommendations, block ads in the browser, and use advanced traffic filtering techniques. Xiaomi provides tools to disable most sources, but some settings are hidden deep in the menu or require additional actions.

Disabling MSA System Advertising and Recommendations

The fundamental step is to deactivate the MSA service, which is a system service that is responsible for loading and displaying advertising content in the shell, and without disabling this component, any other manipulations may not be effective, as the system will constantly try to download new banners, and you can find this option in the password settings and security section.

It's important to understand that when you try to disable the MSA, the system may ask you several times to say that without advertising, the functionality will be limited. This is a standard trick, and there will be no real damage to the phone.

In parallel with MSA, you have to turn off personalized recommendations, which are responsible for the appearance of advertising cards in application folders and on the desktop, and these settings are scattered across different menu items, so you should be careful when you look for them, and they are often activated automatically after you update the firmware.

• 📱 Go to Settings. → Passwords and security → Access to personal data and disable the MSA slider.
• 📱 Go to Settings. → Passwords and security → Special Opportunities and Disable Receive Recommendations.
• 📱 Open the Tools folder, click on the gear and turn off the Receive Recommendations option.
• 📱 In the “Security” app, go to the settings and remove the tick from the “Receive recommendations” item.

⚠️ Attention: After the service is disconnected MSA Some system applications may temporarily run unstable or not open. If this happens, just turn the service back on. 5-10 seconds, and then turn it off again.

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Disabling MSA is a critical step that blocks up to 80% of all system-level advertising.

Setup of the built-in browser Mi Browser

Xiaomi’s standard browser is often the main source of advertising junk when surfing the Internet; by default, it is set to display news feeds and promotional materials. To turn it into a pure navigation tool, you need to manually change several settings in the privacy settings section.

First, you need to turn off personalization of ads that are based on your browsing history, not only to remove targeted ads, but also to increase your digital privacy, and then remove the news feed, which automatically loads on the browser's start page, taking up useful screen space.

Also worth paying attention to is the notification settings: Many sites request permission to display notifications that are actually disguised ads; the built-in ad blocker in the Mi Browser works quite effectively when activated; it filters out known ad domains and tracking scripts.

For a deeper cleaning, you can use hidden settings or experimental features if your version of the browser supports them, sometimes it is useful to reset the browser settings to factory if it has begun to behave incorrectly after many changes.

Using a Private DNS to Block Advertising

One of the most effective and elegant ways to remove ads on the Internet on a Xiaomi phone is to configure a private DNS (Domain Name System), which works at the network connection level, blocking requests to known ad servers even before content is uploaded to the device, which allows you to clean the traffic in all applications at once.

The essence of the method is to use DNS-servers with filtering function, for example, AdGuard DNS. Your phone is sending a request to convert the domain name to IP-The address is not a standard provider, but a special server that cuts off advertising domains, the result is the absence of banners in the browser, games and even some system interfaces.

It's set up through the network connection menu, so you don't have to install additional apps or get super-user rights, just type the server address into the appropriate field, and it's universal and it's suitable for any version of Android you've got on your smartphone.

dns.adguard.com

This is the address you need to enter in the field "Hostname of the private DNS." After saving the setting, it is recommended to switch the phone to air mode for 10 seconds and back to reset the DNS cache. If the Internet stopped working, then the address is entered with an error or the server is temporarily unavailable.

Managing Notifications and Application Permissions

Users often confuse system advertising with intrusive notifications from installed applications. App store, games, delivery services, and even flashlights can request permission to display notifications, turning the smartphone curtain into an advertising board, control of these permissions is in your hands.

You need to regularly review the list of apps that have access to notifications. MIUI and HyperOS have a handy tool to manage this, you can turn off notifications for specific categories of applications or prevent them from appearing on a locked screen, leaving only important messages.

Special attention should be paid to the app GetApps (formerly Mi Store), which is an app store from Xiaomi, which is set by default to aggressive distribution of promotions. Disabling its notifications will not affect the ability to update installed programs, but will save your nerves.

It's also worth checking the permissions for newly installed games and utilities, and if a simple calculator requires Internet access and notifications, that's a suspicious sign, and in such cases, it's better to uninstall the app and find a more reliable analog.

Installation of third-party ad blockers

If there's not enough built-in tools, specialized blocking apps come to the rescue. DNS-And the way they filter content is more flexible, by analyzing traffic in real time, and the leader in this area is the AdGuard app, which has a full version for Android.

These programs often require localization. VPN-It doesn't mean your traffic is going anywhere; VPN It's created inside the phone to let data through the application filter, and it allows you to cut ads even inside other applications where the usual blocker is used. DNS may be powerless.

There are also open source alternatives like Blokada, which work on a similar principle, using host lists to block unwanted connections, and installing such applications from third-party sources requires permission to install from unknown sources, which is standard Android security procedure.

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Use browsers with built-in protection, such as Brave or Firefox with the uBlock Origin add-on, for maximum comfort when surfing the Internet.

Solving problems with viral advertising

Sometimes the ads are not systemic, but malicious, and if the ad windows pop up on top of other apps at random, or if unknown icons appear on your desktop, your phone is infected with an adware virus. APK-Files from unverified sources.

The first step is to identify the culprit. Go to Settings → Apps → All apps and look carefully at the list. Look for apps without a name, without an icon or those that you don't remember installing. Often viruses are disguised as system processes or have transparent icons.

If you can't find the virus manually, use Safe Start mode. To do this, press the power button, and then (hold) the "Switch off" button on the screen until you prompt to go to Safe Mode. In this mode, only system applications are launched, which allows you to safely remove the malicious software.

⚠️ Warning: Never agree to install Flash Player "updates" or "antiviruses" that offer sites with pirated content.This is the most common way to infect Android smartphones.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)