Xiaomi is one of the biggest smartphone players in India and rightfully so. It offers quality hardware at bargain prices, making it hard to ignore. However, if there's one longstanding issue we've had with its phones, it's that the software can be very annoying to use due to the pre-installed bloatware and ads in the native apps. It's an issue we're sure many of you have had or still have to this day and this continues to be a problem even in the company's current MIUI 11 Android ROM.
In the past, we've done a step-by-step guide on how to go about disabling ads in MIUI 10. If you're still on MIUI 9, then worry not, as you can follow these steps instead. Today, we'll be taking a quick tour on how you can go about disabling ads in MIUI 11. Other than a few minor changes, the procedure remains similar to previous versions of MIUI.
If you're unsure what version you have, simply open the Settings app on your Xiaomi phone and then check the first entry, which should be ‘About phone.' This should tell you the version of MIUI, such as ‘MIUI Global 11.0.4.' If it is version 11, then proceed with the following steps. For this guide, we used a Redmi Note 8 Pro (Review) and the Redmi Note 9 Pro (Review), both running slightly different versions of MIUI 11.
The biggest reason for seeing ads in the stock apps is the MSA or MIUI System Ads process that runs in the background. In previous versions of MIUI, you had to keep toggling the switch off multiple times, before it actually got disabled, but in our experience, it's much simpler to deactivate it in MIUI 11.
That's about all you need to know, but we do have some bonus steps you can follow to fully ensure all ads are gone. Here are some additional steps you can take if you want to.
These steps alone should take care of any ads you might see within the native apps but this won't stop those same apps from flooding your notification shade with spammy alerts. For this, you'll have to go to the individual apps and disable the notifications from each one. Let's see how that's done.
Now that we've taken all the steps to get rid or at least minimise ads and unwanted notifications from the native apps, it's time to deal with the excess apps that come pre-installed. There are plenty of them, including Dailyhunt, WPS Office, Opera Mini, and some small games too, such as Ludo Master, Pop Shooter Blast, etc. Thankfully, most of them can be uninstalled including ones like Mi Community, Mi Store, and Mi Credit. Here's who to do this:
Some default folders such as Games and More apps tend to show you 'Promoted apps' when you open them.
After this, you should be left with a leaner looking MIUI 11 interface than when you first set it up. While you should see lesser to absolutely no promotional alerts or ads, some native apps might still send you alerts every now and then. If you wish to disable alerts from such apps altogether, then that can be done too. To do this, simply long-press on the alert from the notification shade and you'll see a toggle switch to turn off notifications from the app altogether. Disable this and you'll should never receive a notification from that particular app. If you want to proactively do this for other apps too, then:
After doing these steps, we haven't noticed any unwanted ads or spammy alerts clogging up our notification shade in MIUI 11, which is a refreshing change.
Is Redmi Note 9 Pro the new best phone under Rs. 15,000? We discussed how you can pick the best one, on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.
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