MIUI is not like other Android ROMs. It has a full UI overhaul and adds a bunch of extra customization. A lot of the really nice features that made Gingerbread MIUI nice have been incorporated into ICS, and even more incorporated into CM9/AOKP... but not all of them. This guide is going to gloss over the features that are now standard in ICS and focus mainly on MIUI specific features.
*These features are as of the most recent MIUI version, some may work in older versions, some may not*
Some things to start with, just some quick things that I do every first boot:
Enable root: Find the Permissions app, turn root switch to ON.
Turn off 3G download limit: Downloads app, menu > settings > turn off Data download prompt
Change battery display: Settings > Battery > Battery indicator style. My personal favorite is top-bar
Set long-press back button to kill app: Settings > Button > Long-press Back to kill app, and delay time underneath
Customize toggles: Settings > Status Bar: Choose full page/compact toggles, Customize position underneath.
There's some more cool features in those menus, I implore everyone to explore the settings app thoroughly.
MIUI Home
Where's the app drawer? Well, there isn't one. Installed applications are placed on your homescreen. There are some ways around this. One way is to put your apps in a folder and place that folder in your dock. Another way is to simply use another launcher such as Apex or Nova. Yet another way would be to use an app drawer app, such as AppDrawer.
Enough about what MIUI doesn't have, lets get into the cool aspects of the launcher:
The dock: You can have up to 6 icons in your dock, and as little as none, including folders. It auto-rearranges to fit your icons centered.
Two & Three finger pinch: Pinch the home screen with two fingers and you enter widget edit mode. Easily rearrange widgets and icons from page to page and customize MIUI widgets (more on that later). Pinch with three fingers and you enter the home page edit mode. Here you can add more screens, remove screens and rearrange them. One nice thing you can do when creating a new screen is to grab directly from the + logo to where you want that screen.
Multi-touch icon placement: Pick up an icon or widget with one finger, and you can slide pages with your other finger for easy page movement.
Widgets: MIUI has some really amazing looking widgets including 3 clocks, 3 picture frames, and a full size music widget. These widgets are made even more amazing by their ability to be themed. There's a bunch of widgets available for them through the theme manager. One really nice thing about these widgets is that they don't update when you're not on that homescreen. This saves battery life and RAM consumption.
Lockscreen
Custom MIUI lock screens can do almost anything. The stock lock screen can unlock normally, unlock to messaging, phone, or camera. You can double tap the lock icon to bring up music controls and a visualization, though this will be shown automatically if you have music playing. You can preview unread text messages and missed call callers by holding the lock icon.
Then there's two features that work regardless of what lockscreen you're using. You can hold the home button to turn on the flashlight if your phone has a flash, and you can hold the back button to unlock directly to camera (in recent builds this needs to be enabled in Settings > Button)
Theme Manager
Probably the best feature of MIUI is the Theme Manager.
You can apply themes like normal, or mix and match pieces of your themes together in the "Mix" section.
You can pick pieces of full themes to not apply picking the theme, then choosing the icon in the bottom left. Really like your icon pack? Uncheck "Icons" and hit apply, you get the rest of the theme, but keep whatever icons you had before.
You can save your mix & matched themes. From the Mix section, hit menu > Backup Theme
Themes go in /sdcard/MIUI/theme or you can select them from the File Explorer, or open Theme Manager and menu > Import from SD Card
Besides themes, the Theme Manager is also used to manage ringtones, notifications, and wallpapers.
Place ringtones and notification tones in /sdcard/MIUI/ringtone
Place wallpapers in /sdcard/MIUI/wallpaper
Permissions Manager
The Permissions Manager is split into three sections, root permissions, permissions, and auto-start
Upon installation of an apk off your sdcard, you get asked to grant individual permissions, set "I trust this app," or the default setting will ask you as the app asks for each permission.
The Autostart manager will stop apps from running when your phone boots.
Network Assistant
In the Network Assistant, you can set a maximum amount of traffic to be sent over 3G if you have a limited data plan. It will also tell you which apps are using the most data, and by pressing the button at the bottom of the Traffic Ranking screen, you can limit apps' internet usage. From there, you can also set the default settings of newly installed apps, useful if you want to set apps to only use data off wifi.
Visitor Mode & Access Control
These settings are hidden a little bit. To access them, go into Settings > Security & privacy > Privacy protection
Guarded mode is also known as visitor or guest mode. When visitor mode is on, call logs, notes, gallery data, and text messages are hidden and the launcher cannot enter edit mode. You can also set a password for leaving visitor mode.
Access control gives you the ability to password protect applications. The ability to hide the apps is currently missing but should show up in a later build.
Firewall (formerly Do Not Disturb)
Using the Firewall app, you can send unwanted callers directly to voicemail and reject text messages as well. It has a lot of customization including a whitelist or blacklist and keywords for blocking text messages.
App Killer
MIUI has a built in app killer. You can access it by holding the home icon. It looks similar to the stock ICS task switcher, but looks a little nicer. It functions the same way, you can slide apps away to remove them from memory. There's also a little brush icon in the bottom left for clearing all apps from memory. The little icon in the bottom right takes you to the Running Services settings menu for further control over your running apps.
Miscellaneous Features
A few scattered features between apps.
T9 Dialing: Using the keys on the dialer, you can spell out your contacts' name to find them. For instance, to find "John" you would dial 5646
Long press editing: In almost any MIUI app with a list, (dialer, messaging) you can long press an item to enter editing mode. Select as many items as you want and select one of the options that appears. These options vary from app to app, but all include a "delete" option.
Long press toggles: You can long-press any of the toggles to enter the settings menu for that toggle. For instance, if you long-press the wifi toggle, you go to wifi settings.
To be continued
I'll keep updating this as MIUI gets updated. Feel free to post some suggestions and features you think are cool.
Hello, i'm currently using sense 5 ex, and i'm wondering how to enable the transition, even though the option is enabled in settings, for example when i come back to the home screen there is no transition. Is there a flashable package for enabling transition?
Thanks for answers!
check apex ROM thread
I tried apex animations
but they are not fully working
i mean there is no animation in ui when i open any app and exit it
Whilst working on a Kiosk project at work, I found that most of the Kiosk applications on Google Play are either bloated, expensive (some 30 GBP + per device) or unstable. So I decided to bite the bullet and write my own version, of which can be found below:
Kiosk Web Browser/Launcher has been designed for use on tablets or phones and is great for creating public kiosks, digital signage etc....
Key features:
- Set as default launcher
- Set default kiosk home page
- Keep screen on permanently
- Reload page on idle timeout
- Lock Screen Rotation
- Disable access to settings - via default intent
- Disable access to Google Now - via default intent
- Password protected settings
- Hide menu items (settings is then accessible via blank square in the top right hand corner)
- Hidden notification bar
- Locked back button
- Disable access to recent apps
- Load website in desktop mode (user agent)
- Customisable application title
- Optional pinch & double-tap zooming
- Optional back & forward buttons
Tested on Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and a ViewSonic VS220 smart monitor.
All comments & suggestions welcome.
v1.10
Long press for settings (causing issues with zooming) - this has been replaced by a blank square in the top right hand corner
Fix for sites using jquery mobile
Added option for user agent, note the default is mobile but can be changed to desktop view
v1.09
Long press for settings (causing issues with zooming) - this has been replaced by a blank square in the top right hand corner
Various Android 4.4 KitKit bug fixes
Added option to reload kiosk home page whenever connection is restored 3G/Wi-Fi
Fixed issue with hyperlink sound preference resetting itself
Fixe for custom icons image picker not appearing
v1.08
Long press for settings (causing issues with zooming) - this has been replaced by a blank square in the top right hand corner
Initial work on Android 4.4 KitKit issues
Disable saving of form data
v1.07
Custom icon support for top left corner (use any image file on device)
Rotation fix to stop page reloading to home page
Various bug fixes
New branding!
v1.06
Removed long press for settings (causing issues with zooming) - this has been replaced by a blank square in the top right hand corner
Improvements to disabling system bar buttons
Added lights out for system bar (shows dots rather than normal home symbol etc...)
Fixed rotation issues
Added optional pinch & double-tap zooming
Added optional back & forward buttons
Added spinner to indicate the page is loading
v1.05 - Added option to disable page timeout & to lock screen rotation
v1.04 - Resolved issue with HTTPS websites & removed access to Google Now
v1.03 - Added option to disable caching
v1.02 - You can now hide the menu items and access settings via long press & hold on the screen
v1.01 - Added support for javascript alerts
Initial release
Single app vs. web browser
How difficult would it be to launch and arbitrary app instead of the web browser?
There seems to be this distinction between 'web browser kiosk' software and 'single app kiosk'. I would think most of the functionality is duplicated (overriding default behaviors, hiding UI elements, power management, etc)
Hi,
This app doesn't just launch the browser it is a browser based on the Android Webview. Disabling system functions for a 3rd party app is more difficult to achieve but not impossible.
DanGarthwaite said:
How difficult would it be to launch and arbitrary app instead of the web browser?
There seems to be this distinction between 'web browser kiosk' software and 'single app kiosk'. I would think most of the functionality is duplicated (overriding default behaviors, hiding UI elements, power management, etc)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Basically what I'm looking for in a browser:
1. Not horrible text rendering like Chrome.
2. Hides address bar when scrolling down, but brings back if you scroll up a little. At the same time, does not have to be in "fullscreen" mode which hides the status bar.
3. Does not have a bar at the bottom with back/forward buttons like iPhone. I like my screen space and there's already a nav bar down there.
4. Flash is a big plus but not essential.
Chrome sucks, Opera is now similar to Chrome, Firefox text rendering sucks, new AOSP sucks. Dolphin's out (pinch to zoom doesn't work, address bar stays hidden on scroll up).
I just want my Jelly Bean AOSP browser back. It was just perfect in every way.
Features:Version2.5 S Edition:
Kitkat styled Start Up..
Change of UI[Now looks more neat]..
Kitkat Styled App Drawer Icon..
Added Menu Access on HomeScreen..
Guide to instruct user how to use launcher..
Launcher Settings Added to allow user to choose swipes and dock apps..
Swipe Options provided are:
Wireless Settings..
Airplane Settings..
Wifi Settings..
Apn Settings..
BlueTooth Settings
Date Settings..
Locale Settings..
Input Method Settings..
Display Settings..
Security Settings..
Location Settings..
Internal Storage Settings..
Memory Card Settings..
Allows User to add Dock Apps[Now can change dock apps any Number of times]..
Toggles are inbuilt in Launcher..
Airplane
Wifi
BlueTooth
Mobile Data
GPS
Silent Mode
Vibrate Mode
GridView And ListView Typed App Drawer..
Swipe from right to left to access favorite apps list..
User can add any number of apps to favorite list..
Deletion of apps from favorite list..
Instructions:
Please Read Guide after startup..
Download NLauncherV2.5 S Edition from attatchments..
Install it as normal Application..
Press home and set is as default..
#Read This..
How to access Toggles Page?
A)Long press on app drawer on homescreen launches Toggles Page..
What if Icons of Dock Apps Won't appear?
A)Just press Back on HomeScreen Will bring you icons..
Facing problem Regarding wallpaper scaling in landscape mode?
A)Set Launcher as Default One and reboot your phone once..
Downloads Check Attachments:
CreDits...:
powerpoint45[Senior member]
Google..
XDA..
Android..
My phone[SAMSUNG GALAXY MINI]..
SS..
My Friend[CD]..
Myself..
check this:
http://www.xda-developers.com/androi...ntent=FaceBook
Original Thread
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