Find your way around the Xiaomi HyperOS settings layout
Xiaomi's layer on top of Android renames and regroups enough of the standard list that instructions written for a stock phone often send people to the wrong place. Thirteen top-level entries, four levels at most, and a habit of putting appearance controls near the front. Seeing the arrangement in full removes most of the guesswork before you hand a phone back to its owner.
At a glance
Pick HyperOS and a phone appears with its Settings already open. Nothing is a screenshot — every row is a live element you can tap into, and the tree underneath it is the real one. The counts below come from the tree itself, so they move only when the tree does.
- 13top-level entries
- 237rows in total
- 4levels deep
- 2versions
| Device family | Phones |
|---|---|
| Frame shown | Phone |
| Versions | 2.0, 1.0 |
| Deepest path | 4 levels below the main list |
| Interface languages | 12, switchable while you browse |
| Account needed | No — it runs entirely in your browser |
How HyperOS organises Settings
The ordering puts looks before plumbing. After Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Connection and sharing come Wallpaper and Home screen as separate top-level entries, which no stock Android build does, followed by Display and Sound and vibration. Notifications and Control center are combined into one heading because on this system they share a pull-down surface. Then the practical tail: Battery, Privacy protection, Passwords and security, Additional settings and About phone. Thirteen entries and only two hundred and thirty-seven rows in total make this one of the tighter Android layers, and the tightness is achieved by merging categories rather than by hiding them.
The trade-off for a short list is a catch-all. Additional settings is where anything that did not earn a heading ends up, and that is the first place to look when a setting seems to have vanished. Elsewhere the grouping is genuinely helpful: Home screen carries With App Drawer and Classic side by side, so the biggest visual decision on the phone is a single choice rather than a hunt. Display keeps Light, Dark, Refresh rate, Reading mode and Sunlight mode together. Compared with other Android skins, this one names things descriptively rather than borrowing Google's vocabulary.
Three settings worth finding
Settings > Home screen > With App DrawerThis chooses whether installed apps live in a drawer or sit spread across the home screens. It is the difference between a phone that feels like stock Android and one that does not, and it is a single tap that new owners frequently spend an afternoon looking for.
Settings > Display > Refresh rateRefresh rate trades smoothness against battery life, and on this system it sits in Display rather than under a power heading. Anyone troubleshooting a phone that drains quickly should check here early, because a high setting left on by default explains a great deal.
Settings > Connection and sharing > Private DNSPrivate DNS decides which server resolves the names of the sites you visit, and encrypts those lookups. It is buried three levels down under a heading most people skim past, yet it is one of the few network settings on a phone with a real privacy consequence.
Versions of HyperOS you can open
2 builds of HyperOS are here. Open two of them and the differences stop being release-note bullet points and become screens you can point at.
How this menu got here
Xiaomi's interface spent more than a decade under a different name before it was rebuilt and relaunched as HyperOS, and the settings list carried much of its ancestry across. Entries that had grown scattered were consolidated, several headings were renamed in plainer language, and the appearance controls kept their unusually prominent position. The two versions offered here, 2.0 and 1.0, bracket that consolidation: the earlier one still shows the inherited arrangement more clearly, the later one groups related switches more aggressively. Layout is reconstructed from the shipping interface.
Who this is useful for
Repair shop staff and phone resellers who handle a dozen brands a week need to know where this layer parked things, and a flat view is quicker than picking up a demo unit. Family members giving directions over the phone benefit too, since the headings here do not match the ones on a Pixel. So do reviewers comparing skins, and anyone about to switch brands who wants to see the differences before committing.
What is real and what is sample data
The structure is the real thing: menu names, their order, how they are grouped and what sits inside each one. That is why this article can quote a path such as Settings > Home screen > With App Drawer and expect it to match your phone.
The state cannot be. A device name, an address, a build number, a network name, a storage figure, whether a particular switch is on or off — those belong to a physical phone, not to a menu tree. Those values appear here as clearly-marked samples. They are there so the row has the right shape, and they should never be read as a fact about a real phone.
Try it yourself
Open HyperOS and walk the tree. If you are writing instructions for someone else, turn the step recorder on first: it captures the exact click-path you take, so you can replay or hand over the path instead of typing out tap this, then tap that. If you are weighing one system against another, put HyperOS beside a second one and compare the same screen on both. If you already know what the setting is called, the site-wide search will tell you which section hides it here.
Open HyperOS in the simulatorFree, no account, works offline — 237 settings rows across 2 versions.Key points
- HyperOS shows 13 top-level entries and 237 rows in total, nested up to 4 levels.
- Nothing in the menu listing above was retyped by hand, which is why a path from this page can be followed on a real phone.
- Device-specific figures on screen are placeholders; the structure around them is not.
Questions about HyperOS settings
Is HyperOS the same as MIUI?
It is the successor to Xiaomi's earlier interface, rebuilt rather than renamed, and the settings list shows both continuity and change. Several headings were simplified and related switches were pulled together. If you learned the older layout, most of your knowledge still applies, but a few destinations moved and Additional settings absorbed more than it used to.
Can I practise a fix here before doing it on a real phone?
Yes, that is a common use. You can walk the exact path in the simulator, note each heading, then repeat it on the device with confidence. Nothing you tap here affects hardware, and figures such as network names and paired accessories are sample values included to make the screens look convincing.
Which versions does the simulator include?
HyperOS 2.0 and HyperOS 1.0 are both available and you can move between them without leaving the category you are in. That helps when a written guide was made for the earlier release and the reader cannot find the heading it names, since you can see at a glance whether it was renamed or relocated.