How to change system sounds on Xiaomi: 5 proven ways

System sounds on Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphones are often annoying — too loud notifications, monotonous alarm melodies or a standard bell that everyone you know has heard. Fortunately, the MIUI shell offers several ways to personalize audio, including hidden features and third-party solutions. In this article, we will discuss all the current methods of changing system sounds, from basic settings to advanced tricks for experienced users.

Many Xiaomi device owners don’t even realize that you can not only change the melody of a call, but also customize individual sounds for each contact, create your own notifications from music files or completely turn off vibration for specific applications. And with the release of MIUI 14, new customization features are worth knowing about. Let’s figure out how to make your smartphone sound unique — without unnecessary complexity and taking into account all the nuances of firmware.

If you’ve never changed system sounds on Xiaomi, start with the simplest, standard MIUI settings. This method works on all models, from the budget Redmi Note 12 to the flagship Xiaomi 13 Ultra, and does not require superuser rights or install additional programs. The main thing is to know where to look for the right options, because in different versions of MIUI they can “hide” in unexpected menu sections.

1. Standard method: modifying sounds through MIUI settings

The most obvious and safe method is to use built-in shell tools, which are suitable for replacing the basic system sounds: the bell, the notifications, the alarm clock and the interface sounds.

Open the Settings app and go to the Sounds and Vibrations section, and here you'll see a few categories: ringing melody, notification sound, alarm clock sound, and touch sounds. Click on the right category to see the list of available sounds.

In MIUI 14, the list of standard tunes is divided into tabs: MIUI (branded sounds), Classic (standard Android tunes) and Local (your own files).If you want to use your music, pre-copy the audio files to the Ringtones, Notifications or Alarms folder on internal storage.

Notice the volume slider at the top of the screen, where you can quickly adjust the sound level for each type of notification separately, which is handy if you want the alarm to be louder than the bell and the notifications to be quieter.

• 🔔 Call: Choose a tune from the suggested ones or add your own (formats) MP3, WAV, OGG). In some models, different sounds can be set to SIM1 and SIM2.
• 📱 Notifications: Here the sound is set up for messages, mail and other alerts. MIUI 14 it became possible to assign unique sounds to individual applications.
• ⏰ Alarm clock: You can choose both standard signals and your own tracks (>5 minutes) may be circumcised.
• 🎵 Touch sounds: Turns on/off sound effects when pressed, locked and unlocked.

⚠️ Note: On some models (e.g, POCO F5) post-update MIUI 14 may miss the Local Sounds tab. To return it, clear the Settings cache through Settings. → Annexes → Application management → Settings → Warehouse → Clear the cache.

2. personalized sounds for individual contacts

If you're tired of hearing all calls the same, MIUI has a feature for assigning unique tunes to specific contacts, which is especially useful when you want to know who's calling right away - boss, loved one or spammer.

Open the Contacts app, select the contact you want, and click Edit. Scroll down to Call Melody (on some devices it is hidden under Additional), where you can select any sound from the standard list or add your file.

Interesting life hack: if you assign a quiet sound (like a silent tune) to spam contacts, you can automatically ignore unwanted calls without locking the number, and for important contacts, you can set a repeating tune that will play until you answer.

MIUI 13/14 also allows you to assign different sounds to messages from specific contacts. To do this, in chatting with a person in the Messages app, click on the three dots in the upper right corner → Details → Notifications sound.

3. Use of third-party applications for advanced customization

Standard instruments MIUI If you want more features, like assigning different sounds to different types of notifications (messages, emails, social networks) or creating dynamic tunes, you'll have to use third-party apps.-3 tested solutions:

• 🎛️ Zedge is the largest database of ringtones and notification sounds with pre-listening, categorization by mood, genre and popularity, and the app automatically adds downloaded sounds to the system folders. MIUI.
• 🔊 Ringtone Maker is a tool for creating your own tunes from music tracks, you can cut snippets of songs, add attenuation effects and save in a format optimized for system sounds.
• 🛠️ Notification History Log not only manages sounds, but also keeps a notification log, useful if you want to assign unique signals for rare but important alerts (for example, from banking applications).

Before installing third-party apps, check their ratings and reviews — some Google Play programs may contain ads or request unnecessary permissions. For example, Zedge requires access to storage (to download sounds) and notifications (to test tunes), which is logical, but other apps may ask for access to contacts or location — this is already suspicious.

After installing any of these applications, you will need to manually specify the path to the downloaded sounds in the MIUI settings.

1. Copy audio files to Ringtones, Notifications or Alarms folder on internal storage.
2. Restart your device (sometimes MIUI doesn’t see new files without restarting).
3. Go to Settings → Sounds and vibrations and select your sound from the Local tab.

⚠️ Attention: On devices with MIUI for POCO (for example, POCO X5 Pro may not automatically add sounds from third-party applications to system folders, in which case use a file manager (e.g. Mi File Manager) to manually copy files.

Download the application from the official source (Google Play, APKMirror)

Check the permissions of the application before installation

Back up your current sounds (copy Ringtones/Notifications folders to the cloud)

Clear the cache of the Settings app after adding new files

Reset the device to apply changes-->

4. Hidden MIUI settings: audio profiles and modes

Few people know, but MIUI has hidden audio profiles that allow you to quickly switch between different sets of audio settings, which is useful if you need, for example, to have quiet notifications at work and loud ones at home.

To activate this function:

1. Open the Settings. → Sounds and vibrations.
2. Click on the three dots in the top right corner and select Additional Settings (on some devices this item is called Sound Modes).
3. Here you will see pre-configured profiles: General, Quiet, No Sound and Outdoors.
4. Click Set up profiles to create your own version with unique sounds for each type of alert.

MIUI 14 now allows you to geolocate your profiles or time of day, for example, you can set it to automatically activate silent mode from 22:00 to 7:00, and during business hours, a profile with notification sounds turned off but calls turned on.

Another hidden feature is Do Not Disturb mode, with exceptions, which can be configured to:

Calls from selected contacts were even silent.

Repeated calls from one number within 3 minutes broke through the lock.

Notifications from specific applications (e.g. messengers) were ignored, while others were not.

5. Advanced Customization: Changing System Sounds Through ADB

If you’re willing to take drastic measures and have experience with ADB (Android Debug Bridge), you can replace the built-in MIUI system sounds with your own, including charging sounds, USB connections, and system errors, which requires an unlocked bootloader and superuser rights, but gives you full control over the audio experience.

Here's the step-by-step instruction:

1. Install ADB Tools on your computer and connect your smartphone in debugging mode (includes in Settings → About Phone → MIUI version – press 7 times, then return to Additional Settings → For Developers → Debugging over USB).
2. Download the archive with MIUI system sounds (can be extracted from your model’s firmware) or prepare your files in.ogg format with the correct names (e.g. notification.ogg, alarm.ogg).
3. Open the command line and execute: adb shell su mount -o rw,remount /system cp /sdcard/your_sound.ogg /system/media/audio/notifications/ chmod 644 /system/media/audio/notifications/your_sound.ogg reboot

Important: Incorrectly changing system files can lead to bootloop.Before experimenting, back up /system partition via TWRP.

List of the main system sounds that can be replaced:

• 🔋 charge.ogg – the sound of charging connection
• 🔌 dock.ogg – Connecting to a docking station
• 📴 Lowbattery.ogg – Low charge warning
• 🚨 error.ogg – the sound of a system error

⚠️ Attention: On devices with MIUI 14 Android-based 13+ The path to system sounds may be different. Use the find command /system -name "*.ogg" to find current files. Also note that after updating the firmware, your custom sounds may reset.

6.Recovery of standard MIUI sounds

If you want to return standard tunes after experimenting with sounds, you can do this in several ways depending on what changes you made.

For standard MIUI settings:

1. Go to Settings → Sounds and vibrations.
2. Select a category (e.g., a ringtone).
3. Click Reset or select the sound from the MIUI tab.

For sounds modified through ADB:

1. Download the original firmware for your model from en.miui.com.
2. Remove the system.img file from it and mount it in Linux or through the AIK (Android Image Kitchen) program.
3. Copy the original sounds from /system/media/audio/ back to the device.

If you are not sure what sounds have been changed, you can reset the sound settings through the engineering menu:

1. In the phone app, type ##36446337## (not all models).
2. Go to Audio and select Restore Default.

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Before resetting your sounds, export your current settings through the Mi Mover app or manually copy Ringtones, Notifications, Alarms folders to your computer, which will allow you to quickly restore customization if you don’t like standard sounds.

7. Frequent problems and their solutions

When changing system sounds on Xiaomi, users often encounter common errors, and here are the most common ones and ways to fix them:

• 🔇 Sounds don't change: Clear the Settings and Media Storage app cache. If it doesn't help, restart the device.
• 📱 No Local Sounds tab: Install a file manager (such as Mi File Manager) and manually create Ringtones, Notifications, Alarms folders at the root of the internal storage.
• 🔊 Cutting sounds: Make sure the file is no longer than 30 seconds (for alarm clocks, 5 minutes). MP3 or OGG bitrate not higher than 192 kbps.
• 🚫 You cannot set your sound for notifications: MIUI 14 for some applications (e.g. WhatsApp) notification sounds are customized inside the messenger itself, not in system settings.

If all custom sounds are lost after the MIUI update, this is because the new firmware version resets the media settings. To avoid loss, regularly back up the folders with sounds through Settings → Additional → Backup and Reset.

On low-quality speakers (such as the Redmi 10A), some user sounds may sound distorted.

Reduce the bitrate of the audio file to 128 kbps.

Convert sound to mono instead of stereo.

Use a uniform volume level (normalize audio through Audacity).

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Before you manipulate any sounds, check to see if the power saving mode is on, and in MIUI, it can restrict the audio system, so that new sounds are not used.

FAQ: Answers to popular questions