MIUI (pronunciation: ''Me You I'') is an Android -based

mobile operating system A mobile operating system is an operating system for mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typical laptops are "mobile", the operating systems used on ...

developed and maintained by

Xiaomi Corporation (; ), commonly known as Xiaomi and registered as Xiaomi Inc., is a Chinese designer and manufacturer of consumer electronics and related software, home appliances, and household items. Behind Samsung, it is the second largest ma ...

independently of

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

exclusively for its

smartphones A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which ...

. MIUI includes various features such as theme support. It is the basis for other operating systems created by Xiaomi: MIUI for POCO, MIUI for Pad, MIUI for Watch, and MIUI for TV (PatchWall). There are different versions for each Xiaomi phone, and each version has variants according to the regions in which the phone is sold, such as China, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, Indonesia, India, Taiwan and Turkey. Xiaomi has released some smartphones with

Android One Android One is a family of third-party Android smartphones promoted by Google. In comparison to many third-party Android devices, which ship with a manufacturer's customized user interface and bundled apps, these devices run near- stock versi ...

while others have MIUI, based on the current version of Android. Xiaomi devices usually get three Android version updates, but get MIUI updates for four years. The first MIUI ROM was based on Android 2.2.x Froyo and was initially developed in the

Chinese language Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the wor ...

by Chinese startup Xiaomi Tech. Xiaomi added a number of apps to the basic framework, including their Notes, Backup, Music, and Gallery apps. An organisation named Xiaomi Europe (xiaomi.eu), not a part of Xiaomi, was set up in 2010 as a community for English-language MIUI Android and Xiaomi products. xiaomi.eu issues its own versions of Xiaomi MIUI ROMs, based on the stable and weekly beta versions of the Chinese ROM. Installing the xiaomi.eu ROM voids the warranty on Xiaomi phones; according to the xiaomi.eu leader, the official ROM must be flashed and the bootloader locked before returning a device for warranty repair.

MIUI and Google Play services

Google has had disagreements with the Chinese government, and access to many Google services is blocked. MIUI does not ship with

Google Play Services Google Play Services is a proprietary software package produced by Google for installation on Android devices. It consists of background services and libraries for use by mobile apps running on the device When it was introduced in 2012, it pro ...

in mainland China. However, Xiaomi has expanded its operations outside China; MIUI releases for Android devices outside mainland China have Google Play Services and Google Apps such as

Gmail Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP an ...

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

Google Play Store Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating sys ...

pre-installed and functioning as on any other Android device. MIUI global versions are certified by Google.

Comparison of all MIUI variants

MIUI vs Android

Although the MIUI is built on the Android platform, the default user interface of its earlier iterations resembled

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

due to the absence of the application tray, with a grid of icons arrayed in the home panels. Other iOS similarities include the app icons being in a uniform shape, the dialer and in-call interface, the organization of the Settings app, and the visual appearance of toggles in the UI. This prompted some observers to cite how the devices running on MIUI could appeal to iOS users wanting to switch to the Android platform. By 2018, MIUI was increasingly shifting towards a design aesthetic more similar to the stock Android. For instance, several elements in the MIUI 10 build resemble

Android Pie Android Pie ( codenamed Android P during development), also known as Android 9 (API 28) is the ninth major release and the 16th version of the Android mobile operating system. It was first released as a developer preview on March 7, 2018, and ...

features such as the multitasking menu and gesture controls. This change was first seen in the MIUI 9 (ver. 8.5.11) that shipped with the Xiaomi Mi MIX 2S. The MIUI firmware already looked like stock Android P. Another difference from Android is the MIUI's support for themes and custom

fonts In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mode ...

. Users can download theme packs and fonts, which can change the user interface of the device once installed from the Mi Themes Store. It allows advanced users to tweak the hard-coded firmware of their handsets.

Issues

MIUI's kernel was proprietary, and in breach of

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

. Source code for certain components was released to

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

on 25 October 2013. Kernel sources for a few devices, including the Mi3, Mi4, MiNote, and

Redmi Redmi is a subsidiary company owned by the Chinese electronics company Xiaomi. It was first announced in July 2013 as a budget smartphone line, and became a separate sub-brand of Xiaomi in 2019 with entry-level and mid-range devices, while Xia ...

1S, were released in March 2015. In order to raise funds for the company, MIUI has its own online services from Xiaomi, including cloud services, paid themes and games. Payments are transacted using the Mi Credit digital currency. After the government of India banned over 100 Chinese apps and services in 2020 due to national security and privacy concerns, including some made by Xiaomi, the company developed a MIUI version without them for India.

Vulnerabilities

In April 2019, security researcher Arif Khan reported that Xiaomi's browser apps Mi Browser and Mint Browser suffered from a vulnerability that allowed the URL address bar to be spoofed, which affected Indian as well as certain global versions of MIUI. Xiaomi gave Khan a

bug bounty A bug bounty program is a deal offered by many websites, organizations and software developers by which individuals can receive recognition and compensation for reporting bugs, especially those pertaining to security exploits and vulnerabilit ...

but opted not to fix this issue. In addition, a vulnerability in a wallpaper carousel app Glance on Indian versions of MIUI allowed a user to bypass the

lock screen A lock screen is a computer user interface element used by various operating systems. They regulate immediate access to a device by requiring the user to perform a certain action in order to receive access, such as entering a password, using a cert ...

and access clipboard data. This vulnerability was eventually fixed by Xiaomi.

Performance issues

MIUI offers great usage until a point. Users complain about overheating, slow performance, drop in framerate, unstable app function and randomly missing files on the phone storage. Compared to MIUI 12.5, the custom skin brings in several performance

improvements Improvement is the process of a thing moving from one state to a state considered to be better, usually through some action intended to bring about that better state. The concept of improvement is important to governments and businesses, as well a ...

and adds numerous features.

Version history

References

External links

Chinese official website

English official website
{{Mobile operating systems Custom Android firmware Embedded Linux Mobile Linux Cloud clients Mobile operating systems Free mobile software Xiaomi Chinese brands Linux distributions