Xiaomi smartphone owners often face an intrusive notification, “The app is running in the background,” which is designed to extend the battery life of the device by limiting the activity of unused programs. However, aggressive optimization of the MIUI shell or HyperOS sometimes blocks the oxygen of the really needed messengers, navigators or trackers, forcing users to look for ways to control this process.
Understanding how Android is aligned with MIUI’s proprietary interface to allocate resources is key to solving the problem. Instead of completely shutting down, which can disrupt software, customize settings more accurately for each case. Below, we’ll look at all the available methods for controlling background activity, from standard battery settings to hidden engineering menus.
The main goal of the system is to keep programs from running out of battery power and using Internet traffic. But the balance between energy savings and functionality is often biased toward austerity. Background processes can be vital to receiving instant messages or updating geolocation, so it is important to be able to flexibly manage these constraints, rather than just blindly block them.
Reasons for the notification of background work
The appearance of a message that the application is running in the background signals that the system has detected the activity of the program when the device screen is turned off or the user is busy with another task.In modern versions of Android and shells from Xiaomi, it is part of the Doze Mode mechanism and adaptive battery consumption.
Often users inadvertently run heavy processes that continue to hang in RAM, such as games, video editors or browsers with many tabs, the RAM of the smartphone fills up, and the system begins to forcely limit background activity to free up resources for the current interface, in some cases, this leads to a pop-up with a proposal to close the program.
⚠️ Warning: The constant appearance of such notifications may also indicate the presence of malware or a “miner” that hides under the guise of a legitimate application and uses the resources of the processor in a hidden mode.
Another reason is the unoptimized code of the application itself, which sometimes causes developers to forget to implement process lifecycles correctly, which prevents the program from falling asleep after the release, and even after the window is closed, the background service continues to consume energy. Xiaomi, known for its strict energy saving policy, responds by notifying the user to intervene.
Basic settings through the battery menu
The easiest and safest way to manage background activity is in the standard settings menu, where you can manually determine which applications are allowed to run without restrictions and which should be frozen, and first you need to go to Settings and find the App item or Battery and performance.
Inside the power management menu, select the Energy Saving option, and here's a complete list of installed software, and the system automatically classifies them by their impact on charge, and you need to find the problem app on the list and click on it for detailed customization, and there are three main modes of operation available, each with its own characteristics.
- 🔋 No restrictions: the app is allowed to run in the background always, notifications come instantly, but battery consumption can be higher.
- 🛑 Limit background activity: the system will freeze the app 10 minutes after the screen is turned off, notifications may come with a delay.
- ❌ Limit: Hardest mode, background work is completely forbidden, the application will not receive data until the next manual start.
For instant messengers like Telegram, WhatsApp or Viber, it is critical to choose the No Limits mode, otherwise you will stop receiving messages on time. For games and rarely used software, on the contrary, it is better to set a limit to save charge. The changes take effect immediately, you do not need to restart the device. This is a basic level of control that every Xiaomi owner must set up.
☑️ Checking battery settings
Managing Auto Start and Permits
Beyond battery settings, MIUI has a powerful auto-start control tool, and many apps try to start right after the phone is turned on to start working in the background, which leads to dozens of processes hanging in the memory even without you participating, and this is managed along the Settings path → Applications → Permissions → Auto-Start.
In this menu, you'll see a list of all the programs that are allowed to start with the system. Many of them are enabled by default. Autorun is the main source of background activity. If you turn off this option for an application, it can't start itself until you open it manually. This effectively prevents hidden software from working.
| Type of application | Recommended Autostart Status | Impact on the system |
|---|---|---|
| Messengers (WhatsApp, Telegram) | Included | High (necessary for communication) |
| Social media | Off. | Medium (can be opened manually) |
| Games | Off. | Low (wasting resources) |
| Activity trackers | Included | High (requires constant GPS) |
Also worth paying attention to the permissions "Above Other Applications" and "Notifications": Often, it is the permission to display on top of other windows that allows the application to hang in the background as a widget or a floating button, and by turning off this permission in the access rights menu, you will forcibly close the possibility of background work in a visual format.
MIUI's Hidden Permits
Use of the developer mode
For advanced users who don't have the standard methods, there's a developer mode, which is a hidden partition of the system that contains deep Android settings. To activate it, you need to go to About Phone and quickly click on the MIUI build number 7 times. Then a new option will appear in the settings menu "Additional" or "Extended settings", where the developer mode hides.
Within this section, we're interested in the "Background Process Limit" item, which is the default "Standard Limit" that allows the system to decide how many processes to keep in memory. You can change that value by leaving no more than 1 or 2 background processes in the system, a radical method that is guaranteed to stop excess activity, but can lead to unstable multitasking.
Another important option is “Do not turn off the screen” when charging, which indirectly affects the behavior of the system in the background, but is more relevant for testing. It is much more important to pay attention to the animation settings. Accelerating or turning off animations of windows and transitions reduces the load on the GPU, which indirectly reduces the desire of the system to close the background applications to free up resources.
⚠️ Warning: Changing the background limit to "No background processes" can cause alarm clocks, music, and navigation to malfunction. Use this option with caution and only for testing.
Using developer mode gives you complete control, but it requires understanding the consequences. If you set too stringent limits, the system can start killing processes too aggressively, leading to constant restarting of applications every time you switch between them. This is not only annoying, but can increase battery consumption due to constant startup cycles.
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Tip: Before you change your settings in developer mode, take a screenshot of your current values, which will quickly return everything as it was if the system starts to behave unstable or important notifications disappear.
Specifics of MIUI and HyperOS
Xiaomi’s shells have a unique memory management architecture that is different from pure Android. It uses the app freeze mechanism. When you fold a program, it doesn’t just stay in memory, but goes into deep sleep after a while, and it’s this mechanism that often causes conflict, which the user perceives as an “application running in the background” error.
In newer versions of HyperOS, the algorithms are even smarter, and it analyzes how often you use an application and automatically assigns it status, and if you rarely open a game, the system will limit its background activity, even if you didn't manually set it up, which is part of the adaptive battery function, which learns from the habits of the owner.
But automation is sometimes wrong. An important application can be labeled as “rarely used” and limited, so manual control remains a necessary tool, especially in China’s CN ROM, where the aggressiveness of cleaning up memory is higher than in global ROMs. Chinese smartphone owners should pay special attention to setting up the “No restrictions”.
- 📱 Global version: softer policy, less likely to kill background processes without demand.
- 🇨🇳 Chinese version: highly aggressive optimization, requires manual adjustment for every important application.
- 🔄 Updates: After each major firmware update, the energy saving settings can be reset to factory ones, requiring a recheck.
Understanding the logic of your particular version of software helps predict system behavior. If you notice that after the upgrade, the battery is running out for less time, check if the restrictions on voracious applications have been reset. Often, the system defaults on new software without restrictions, which needs to be adjusted.
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Key takeaway: Automatic power saving systems in MIUI are effective, but require manual intervention to configure exceptions for important applications, otherwise you risk missing a call or message.
Third-party utilities and memory cleaning
Many users install third-party “cleaners” and antiviruses, hoping to solve the problem of background processes. However, in the case of MIUI, this often leads to the opposite effect. Xiaomi’s built-in optimizer works at a deep system level, and third-party applications are forced to constantly hang in the background to monitor the system, creating additional resource conflicts.
Applications like Clean Master or Battery Savers can force processes to close, but Xiaomi perceives them as a lack of resources and immediately tries to start processes again to ensure stability. There is a start-kill-run cycle that warms the processor and puts the battery down faster than if the application just worked in the background calmly.
The only exception is specialized developer tools like ADB AppControl (via a computer), which allow you to debug system services via USB without removing them. This is a safe way to remove the excess, but it requires a connection to a PC. Conventional applications from the Play Market for this purpose are better not to use, relying on built-in security functionality.