All Xiaomi devices have one thing in common: the MIUI system. As we all know, this system is designed based on Android and hence the user can install all the apps from Google Play Store. There is nothing unusual about this. However, we will tell you about some tricks and features of Xiaomi smartphones that are not available to other Android devices.

1. How to install Google Play and Google services on Xiaomi

Typically, Xiaomi devices come without the Google Play Store pre-installed. Fortunately, it is very easy for any user to install any Google service, including the Google Play Store.

First, you need to find the application you want to install. Open the browser on your Xiaomi smartphone, enter “google installer” or simply “google” into the search, select the search engine for the search, namely Baidu (blue icon with an animal paw), after which you will be offered several applications. Despite the Chinese name, the Google Play Store application itself has a standard logo.

After installing the Google Play Store application on your Xiaomi smartphone, open it. Again, all the information is in Chinese, but guessing the required button is quite easy. In my case it was a blue circle with Chinese characters in the center.

The app will ask for permission to install several APK files such as Calendar, Contact Manager, Google Services and Google Play Store.

After that, you can register or login with your Gmail account and access the Google Play Store.

2. Select home screen

The MIUI user interface does not have a special menu for applications, so the icons of all installed programs are located on the main screen of the Xiaomi smartphone. To organize your home screen attractively and conveniently, you can add or remove additional screens, or select the home screen that will be displayed after unlocking your smartphone.

3. Customize the lock screen and home screen

If you want to change some elements of the Home screen, you need to touch the screen at two points and move your fingers diagonally towards the center, a similar gesture to zoom in while taking photos. After this, you will see four icons at the bottom of the screen, one of which will be “Effects”. In this section, you can select the transition effect between screens.

You can also add widgets, change wallpapers and place icons.

4. Monitor application data usage

The Security application allows you to control access to Internet applications. Go to Data usage > Restrict data usage and select the app you want to connect to your cellular data connection.

6. Double tap to show notifications

If you have an app on your home screen that shows the number of unread notifications, you can read them by double-tapping the app icon. Additionally, you can dismiss all notifications by swiping them to the right.

7. Battery saving modes

MIUI has several battery saving modes. To access them, go to Settings (Settings)>Advanced options ( Additional Settings)> Battery and performance ( Battery & performance> Power supply ( Power).

You will see four options. "Battery profiles" offer three ways to save energy depending on your needs. "Battery Saver" is able to switch modes depending on the amount of battery charge. “Schedule profile switch” switches modes depending on the time of day. And the last option “Shedule power on/off” sets the time to turn on and off the Xiaomi smartphone.

8. One-handed control mode

For larger Xiaomi devices, or comfortable use of a smartphone with one hand, there is a special mode. Go to Settings ( Settings)>Advanced Settings ( Additional Settings)>One-handed mode ( One-handed mode) and activate it to reduce the screen from 3.5 to 4.5 inches, as you prefer.

9. Turn on a flashlight in an emergency

When your smartphone screen is locked, hold the center button to turn on the flashlight. The flashlight will work until you release your finger.

10. Wake up your smartphone using the volume buttons

The MIUI user interface allows you to wake up the device using the volume buttons. To enable this feature you need to go to Settings ( Settings)>Advanced Settings ( Additional Settings)>Buttons ( Buttons) and activate the “Wake up with volume buttons” feature ( Wake with Volume buttons).

Let’s imagine a situation: You accidentally deleted the “Weather” system application shortcut from your desktop and now you don’t know how to get it back. There are at least 3 ways.

1. ES conductor

You can find this application on Google Play. To display the “Weather” shortcut on the desktop:

• Open ES File Explorer
• Select the APPs tab
• In the top drop-down menu, select the section of the applications that you need. In our case, select “System”
• Now find the “Weather” application and click on it
• In the menu that appears, select “Add to desktop”

If this method does not work, then move on to the second.

2.Total Commander

Download and install it from Google Play. Now follow the instructions in the pictures. For example, let’s display the “Gallery” application shortcut on the desktop.

3. More Shortcuts

If the first two methods do not help (and this happens often), then use the application More Shortcuts.
To get started, download it from Google Play. After it is installed, go to:

There is a small chance that this method will not work either. It is unknown why, but on some firmware, permission to create shortcuts is not automatically set. Therefore, we will do it manually:

Now you know, how to display a shortcut in MIUI absolutely any installed desktop apps.

In this article, we have collected some tips for customizing the desktop on Xiaomi phones.

How to sort desktops

First of all, we bring together three fingers on the screen (swipe) towards the center. This gesture causes you to select the home screen.

To select a different default screen, click on the house icon.

Here you can also change the order of the desktops - this is done by simply dragging and dropping.

You can also add new pages by clicking on the plus (see screenshot below).

Hidden menu options

To bring up the hidden menu, move two fingers towards the center.

Additional icons appear below:

You can also add a new page to your home screen here. To do this, swipe your finger right or left until the “+” icon appears. Click on “+” and get another page.

Now let's talk about the hidden menu items:

Effects

This item is responsible for changing effects when switching between screens. Click on it and you get 8 options:

Widgets

Everything is clear here. This item is responsible for adding new widgets to your screen.

To delete a widget (like an application), just click on it and drag it to the trash.

Sorting

This feature makes it easier to sort applications into folders, if that's what you need. How it works? Click on sort, after which application icons will pop up at the bottom. Select the ones you want to send to the folder.

Now scroll the menu to the right and see an icon called “Folder”. Click on it and it will move to the home screen.

Xiaomi smartphones have taken a good place in the mobile device market, and more and more often I meet people with phones from this manufacturer. And this is absolutely fair, since these devices have an excellent, or simply ideal, price-quality ratio. Today we will talk about some of the tricks that most Xiaomi smartphones have running on Android 5.0 with the proprietary MIUI 8 shell.

Well, let's take a closer look at today's Lifehacks for Xiaomi smartphones that we have prepared for you.

1. Wallpaper carousel.

As soon as I picked up my smartphone and started working with it, a curious button in the upper right corner on the lock screen caught my eye. It turns out that this button launches a very interesting function - a wallpaper carousel.

From the name it immediately became clear that after activating this function, the wallpaper on the lock screen will begin to change. In other words, if you enable the wallpaper carousel feature on your xiaomi smartphone, then you get access to lock screen wallpapers from popular graphic content publications.

I almost forgot, this function will work correctly only if there is an Internet connection.

2. Screenshot with three fingers on the screen.

Yes, everyone knows that in order to take a screenshot of the screen on xiaomi smartphones (as well as on most other gadgets) you need to simultaneously press the power button and volume down. Another known method is to pull the curtain down and press the corresponding button on the switch panel.

I bet that the method of taking a screenshot by swiping down with three fingers is not known to everyone. By default, this feature is not enabled. To activate it, you need to go to Settings/Advanced Settings/Screenshot and enable this function here.

3. Set your picture as wallpaper.

It’s good that the programmers thought about the user in advance and have already included several different pictures in the firmware that can be set as wallpaper. But what if you want to set your picture as your desktop wallpaper or lock screen?

Fortunately, we know two ways that will help us set our own picture as wallpaper on Xiaomi smartphones. Absolutely right, the first method involves long pressing the menu button (this is provided by default in the firmware, and provided that you have not changed the button parameters). In this case, a certain menu will launch that allows you to configure the settings of the desktop, widgets, wallpapers and effects. This is where you need to click on the Wallpaper button, after which we will see a lot of standard, factory pictures. But we need to scroll to the left to the very end where the Other button appears, and then the usual procedure: select the file manager and indicate the desired picture. After this, the system will ask you what wallpaper to set it as, it’s up to you to choose.

The second method is slightly different; to do this, go to Settings/Wallpaper and do what we need - change the desktop or lock screen wallpaper. There you will find in the lower right corner a circle with a plus sign, with which you can set your picture as wallpaper. By the way, there are also settings for the wallpaper carousel, which we wrote about above.

4. Quick access

Another useful feature that few people know about. To enable this utility, you need to go to Settings/Advanced Settings/Quick Access and enable it. In this case, a small transparent button will appear on the screen, when pressed, five more functional buttons will open: home, menu, lock screen, screenshot and back.

5. Cloning applications

That's right, application cloning, what does it mean? Imagine that you have two accounts on a social network and in order to log into one or the other account, you need to constantly log out and log in again. This problem has now been resolved. Xiaomi took care of this problem and gave us the ability to clone applications. That’s right, now you can safely use one application for different accounts. In order to make a clone of a program, you need to go to Settings/Application Cloning and select which application you want to clone.

After cloning an application, another icon with this application will appear on the desktop, but with a special mark.

Read also:

6. Time lapse and slow motion - camera functions

Imagine what colorful videos you’ll get if you speed them up a little (you’ll get a time lapse) or slow them down?

And how surprising it will be to learn that this does not require a computer or additional software at all. And all because xiaomi smartphones have such modes in the camera settings. There is one caveat here: in order to shoot slow-motion video, you need to set the video quality to HD instead of FHD in the camera settings.

Now you have a camera at your fingertips that can take time-lapse or slow-motion footage without any problems.

7. Backup and reset

Using this settings section, you can not only reset your device to factory settings, but also something more interesting. It turns out that on xiaomi smartphones, using this section you can back up system settings, account data (SMS, call log) and applications.

Imagine how pleasantly surprised I was when I completely flashed my smartphone from official to custom firmware, went into the settings and restored all system settings! Yes, of course, before flashing the phone’s firmware, I made a backup copy, but still, how Xiaomi managed to do it, I can’t wrap my head around it. Call log, SMS, notes, all settings: WiFi, radio, weather, cameras, etc. - everything is in place.

8. Keyboard

It would seem that this is not clear. Well, no guys, and there are some tricks here. I have a question for you, or rather two: how do you move the cursor and how do you delete unnecessary words? On xiaomi smartphones, all this can be done a little easier. For example, I learned to erase unnecessary words using a gesture on the delete key, and to move the cursor using gestures on the spacebar. Believe me, it has become much easier to type text on your phone.

In order for the phone keyboard to begin recognizing these gestures, you need to go to Settings/Advanced Settings/Language and Input/Google Keyboard Settings/Continuous Input and only here you can activate these magical gestures.

9. LED indicator

This function may be familiar to most users, but still I decided to mention it. Xiaomi smartphones have a three-color LED, which, as you probably noticed, lights up in different colors. Did you know that you can set almost any color for notifications, calendar, missed calls or messages from applications?

That's exactly what I did, now the missed call - my indicator is green; notification – blue; messages from VKontakte - yellow, messages from Viber - purple, etc. The main thing now is not to get confused.

Where can I set the LED color? Go to Settings/Advanced Settings/LED Control - this is where I configured the color of the indication. To be fair, it is worth noting that applications are configured individually in their own settings.

10. One-handed operation

Have you ever had to use one hand on a smartphone with a diagonal larger than 5 inches? And how, it’s true, it’s not very easy, especially if you have a small palm! Fortunately, our Chinese friends have foreseen this. Of course, the phone does not transform or shrink, but the manufacturer has added an excellent feature - one-handed operation.

What does it mean? This means that if you suddenly need to use one hand (for example, you are driving or carrying a heavy bag), you can activate the one-hand control mode with a slight movement of your thumb. To do this, you just need to swipe your thumb away from the center button on the bottom panel of touch buttons. If you did everything correctly, the system will ask: Enter one-handed control mode? And after confirmation, the working area of ​​the screen will immediately decrease (by default to 4″). In the settings you can either reduce or increase this size.

Agree, it is now much easier to use a smartphone with one hand! To exit this mode, just lock the device or tap outside the zone (outside the reduced working area).

Don’t judge us harshly; perhaps most of you already knew everything about these tricks. Or perhaps this will be useful for someone, and if so, then we didn’t waste our time writing this post.

Tell us in the comments below if this article brought you any benefit.

Stay tuned, there is still a lot of interesting things ahead.

I have carefully collected useful and simple tips for arranging your desktop. The tips below will help you optimize the performance of your device as much as possible and make using Xiaomi gadgets even more enjoyable!

Sorting desktops

Pinch the home screen with three fingers from any side towards the center and the default home screen selection window will open. Click on the house icon and the desktop will be set by default and will always open first. Here you can also add new pages to your home screen by pressing +. The order of desktops can be changed by simply dragging and dropping.

Sorting apps

Pinch with two fingers on either side towards the center of the screen and a hidden desktop settings menu will open. This menu has four main sections: sorting, widgets, wallpapers and effects.

If you click on the application icon, it will move to the bottom of the screen in the sorting section. Here we move all applications that we want to move to another location.

You can also create a folder while sorting. Click on the folder icon at the bottom of the screen and a new folder will appear on the desktop. Open the created folder and move the sorted applications in the same way.

Moving multiple apps at once

If you have selected enough applications to move, then swipe right or left (at the end or beginning of the list) and the applications will be grouped.

Open the desired location and move all grouped apps with one tap, without wasting time moving each app individually. This way, you can not only move several applications at once, but also delete them.

Creating a new desktop page

You can create a new desktop as we described above in the desktop sorting menu, or you can do it in the hidden menu. To do this, simply scroll sideways until you see the “+” icon in the middle of the screen. Click on it and the desktop is created.

Setting up widgets

Click on the “Widgets” button in the hidden menu and you will see a list of widgets available for installation on your desktop. The number of available widgets varies depending on the number of applications installed on your smartphone that have their own widgets.

Some widgets placed on the desktop can be resized. To do this, exit the hidden menu and click on the widget. Don't let go until a frame with guides appears around it.

Selecting desktop wallpaper

Click on the “Wallpaper” button and go to the desktop wallpaper selection menu.

Here you can choose wallpapers both from the online storage and from standard and your own photographs and pictures.

Effects

The fourth button “Effects” opens a menu for selecting effects for turning desktop pages. There are usually 8 options available to choose from.

Automatic sorting

If the icons on your desktop are scattered, then just enter the hidden menu and shake the phone to organize the icons.