Disable Ads in MiUI — Use an Ad-free MIUI without rooting & third-party apps

Xiaomi is one of the top smartphone manufacturing brands across the globe and MiUI is by far the most used custom ROM in India. Xiaomi is one of those brands that have the highest number of top performing smartphones in various price segments.

Thanks to honest pricing, the company has a lot of loyal users across the widespread nation. It’s this loyalty that has kept the company in the Indian market. Else, the company would’ve uprooted a long time by now. There’s an annoying thing Xiaomi does to compensate for the low price-high feature smartphones. No doubts, MiUI is one of the most feature-packed custom android skin available in the market, but it has one major flaw.

It has Ads in the system UI

A smartphone manufacturer of this stature, having ads in the system UI is like using dumbbell as a paperweight. I myself was annoyed for seeing ads everywhere within the system. In fact, there were apps that had way fewer ads than the MiUI has.

That being said, let me share how I got rid of the ads on my Redmi Note 6 Pro, Redmi Note 4 & Redmi 6A.

Note: This trick works on all Xiaomi mobile devices running MiUI 10 & 11.

Before performing any of the steps, you will first need to disable system ads. A service that enables ads across the MiUI, it’s called MSA(MiUI System Ads).

How to revoke msa to disable ads in MiUI

1. Go to Setting “ Additional Settings “ Authorization & revocation
2. Find “msa” and disable it. Tap on Revoke in the pop-up
3. Make sure you are connected to the internet before doing this step.
4. You might see “Couldn’t revoke authorization” on the first attempt. Repeat the above-mentioned steps 2–3 times.

You will see the message “Revoked authorization successfully”.

Now you need to disable the Ad services

How to revoke Ad services to disable ads in MiUI(Disabling Ad Tracking)

1. Go to Settings “ Additional settings “ Privacy “ User Experience program
2. Tap to disable Personalized ad recommendations.

Notice the message under this option, quite annoying thing from Xiaomi.

Doing this will disable ads on a system level. But there are certain Mi bloatware that has a ton of annoying ads.

Let’s remove it one by one

Disable ads in Mi Browser

1. Open Mi browser
2. Tap on 3 vertical lines in the bottom right corner
3. Tap on settings “ Privacy & security
4. Tap on personalized services

This will disable ads in Mi browser. Though Mi devices come with Google Chrome pre-installed, there are many people using Mi browser as an alternative browser.

Disable ads in Mi Security app

This is something that I use almost every day, to clear cache and run a security scan. Seeing ads every day is super annoying. Here’s how you can disable ads in Mi Security app

1. Open Mi security app
2. Tap setting icon in the top right corner
3. Scroll down & disable “Receive recommendations”

Another app that I use daily is cleaner (I’ve set “Remind me to clean” option enabled) and here’s how to disable ads in the cleaner app

1. Open the Security app
2. Tap on the settings icon in the top right corner
3. Under “FEATURE SETTINGS”, tap on Cleaner
4. Scroll down and disable Receive recommendations

Note: Repeat the same steps to disable ads in Boost Speed settings too.

MiUI’s download app is yet another app that has a lot of ads since it is one of the most used pre-installed apps. Here’s

How to disable ads in Downloads apps

1. Open the Downloads app
2. Tap three-dot menu in the top right corner of the app
3. Tap Settings
4. Disable “Show recommended content”

How to disable ads in Mi Music app

Though I don’t use the app much, why have ads when you can get rid of it? To disable ads in Mi Music app perform these steps.

1. Open Mi Music app
2. Tap on Settings
3. Tap on Advanced Settings
4. Scroll down & disable “Receive recommendations”

How to disable ads in Mi Video

I’ll admit, Mi Video is my go-to app for watching offline videos/movies — Sorry MX Player. But the ads are the biggest interruptions while watching movies. Here’s how to disable ads &

1. Open Mi Video app
2. Tap on the account icon in the bottom right
3. Tap on settings
4. Disable “Online recommendations” & “Push notifications”

Mi Video is the worst when it comes to ads. Even when you are not using the app you’d get ad recommendations via push notifications.

Next-level annoying.

Disable ads in App-Lock

MiUI hasn’t spared even spared the app-lock. You’d see huge half screen bulk of ads in app lock. I know it’s annoying because you use the app lock every other hour. Here’s how to disable it

1. Open Settings
2. Scroll down and tap on App lock
3. Tap on app lock setting in the top right corner
4. Disable “Receive recommendations”

I wish I could disable ads in all apps like this, but I use way too many apps to do it manually. Best way to get rid of such ads is not using it altogether.

Jokes apart.

Xiaomi has sold millions of mobile devices just in India, let alone Asian countries like China. That makes it a multi-billion dollar company. Sure, no company offers budget devices as Xiaomi does. But we don’t want budget phones at the cost of annoying ads, people are ready to pay higher and go for other brands. If Xiaomi continues to do this, I don’t think it will remain even in the top 10 in the next few years.

I’m sure these steps will help you have a clean ad-free UI. If you know someone who’s using a Xiaomi device, share this with them and gift them an ad-free MiUI. Also, share on your social profile to help others too.

You can join my mailing list and telegram channel to receive instant updates right on your smartphone.

Originally published at http://www.smarterworld.in on April 25, 2019.