MIUI 12 Disable Ads: How to Remove Ads, and Spam Notifications From Any Xiaomi Smartphone

Want to deep cleanse your Xiaomi smartphone to remove annoying ads? Follow these steps.

By Shubham Raheja | Updated: 24 January 2021 13:07 IST

Highlights

There’s no one-tap solution to remove ads from MIUI 12
Disabling msa will remove most of the ads
For a deeper cleanse, you’ll have to disable ads from individual apps

You can enjoy a fuss-free MIUI 12 experience by removing ads.

Xiaomi is one of the largest smartphone brands in India and is known for its budget smartphones. While its own custom skin based on Android 11, the MIUI 12, comes with some notable features, it also contains ads that are sprinkled all throughout. During the launch of MIUI 12, Xiaomi did mention the presence of a one-tap option to disable system-wide ads, but that feature was missing in the global build. If you are a MIUI 12 user and want to give your smartphone a deep cleanse, here's how you can do it.

Before you start following the steps in this guide, we recommend you to double-check the version of MIUI on your smartphone. If you're still running previous versions of MIUI, we have already made guides for them. Here's the step-by-step process for MIUI 11, MIUI 10 and MIUI 9. Another thing to note here is that we used a Redmi 9 Power for this tutorial, so your mileage may vary.

Disabling the MSA process

To begin our process of disabling ads, we will have to cut off a few things at source. One of these is MSA or MIUI System Ads, which is one of the biggest reasons for seeing ads in stock apps. To disable it:

How to Disable Ads, Spam Notifications in MIUI 11 on Xiaomi Phones

Open the Settings app.
Navigate to Passwords & security > Authorisation & revocation.
Here you'll have to disable msa.
After this, scroll down a bit and disable GetApps as well.
You'll get a 10-second warning message, asking you if you're sure you want to do it.
After the countdown, press Revoke. In case it doesn't let you toggle it off in the first go, (which shouldn't be the case), try it again till it's off.
Even if you reboot your phone, MSA should still be disabled.

MSA or MIUI System Ads is one of the biggest reasons for seeing ads in stock apps

More changes to stop seeing ads in MIUI 12

While that'll take care of most ads, you can still do some tweaks to make sure you catch ‘em all.

Step by Step Instructions to Disable Ads on Your Xiaomi Phone

In the same Password & security sub-menu, go to Privacy.
Then tap Ad services and disable Personalised ad recommendations. This will basically turn off data collection to give you relevant ads.

Turn off ads from Downloads app

Open the Downloads app.
Tap the hamburger menu > Settings.
Disable the toggle for Show recommended content. You'll get a prompt here as well, just select okay.

Turn off ads from File Manager app

Open File Manager app.
Tap the hamburger menu on the top left.
Go to About > disable Recommendations.

Turn off ads from the Music app

Open the Music app.
Head over to the hamburger menu > Service and settings
Select Advanced settings > Receive recommendations.
You can also disable other recommendations here like Online recommendations on startup and Song recommendations. Do note that disabling this will only turn off data collection from this app.

Turn off ads from Security app

Open the Security app
Tap on the Settings button > Receive recommendations.

Turn off ads from Themes app

Open the Themes app.
Go to My page > Settings
Disable the toggle for Recommendations.

Some default folders such as Tools and More Apps tend to show you Promoted apps when you open them.

MIUI 12.5 Developer Version Rollout Begins for 28 Xiaomi Phones

Turn off Promoted apps

Some default folders such as Tools and More Apps tend to show you Promoted apps when you open them. To disable them:

Open Tools and More Apps folder > long-press on the name of the folder, in order to rename it.
Turn the toggle off for Promoted apps.

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