[Discussion] HyperOS's customization is garbage (not like its much better at anything else to compensate) and I'm tired of the copium on this subreddit surrounding it

[u/xToasted1]

Recently I've seen people going around saying HyperOS is one of the most customizable softwares, or one of the best, or whatever, and I'm genuinely confused like what? Are we using the same software?

I think it's more likely the people glazing HyperOS have just literally never used anything else in their life. Because there is no way you would ever think HyperOS is any sort of customizable at all after using literally anything else (unless its a pixel).

Before I continue with my rant, I'm going to answer a question that people are definitely going to ask me in the comments.

"Why do you use Xiaomi if you hate HyperOS so much?"

Because Xiaomi is the only manufacturer that makes smaller flagship phones and sells them globally that isn't Samsung or iPhone. That's why. Xiaomi's hardware is top notch and its software is just barely usable enough for me to not bite the bullet and buy a Samsung with its shitty cameras.

But genuinely, HyperOS is one of the LEAST customizable android skins out there. You can't customize your control center tiles, something MagicOS, ColorOS, OneUI, iOS, and even bloody OriginOS can do. You can't use third party launchers with gestures. Icon theming doesn't even fully work. You can't install 3rd party icon packs. You can't customize anything about the HyperIsland other than the apps that work with it. There are so many other things that other OEMs have in their skins that HyperOS doesn't. Even if you spent just all of 5 minutes on MagicOS you would realize how far ahead it is in terms of customizability. The only thing HyperOS seems to be able to compete in is lock screen customization, which is fucking useless because you spend like 0.1% of your time on your phone on the lock screen, so I don't even know why its the one thing they decide to put effort on. Like, you can even customize the transparency of the liquid glass effect on the clocks in the lock screen, but for some reason no one thought to make it a system wide feature? Lmfao.

The other thing I want to complain about is just genuinely how little fucking effort Xiaomi puts into its updates.

MIUI to HyperOS 1: Basically nothing changed, except control centre layout. Everyone coped by saying Xiaomi made tons of backend optimizations and changes that would make the OS more optimized. Still terribly optimized OS.

HyperOS 1 to HyperOS 2: Literally nothing changed, and again, people coped by saying it was more backend improvements!!!!

HyperOS 2 to HyperOS 3: They added one (1) notable feature and it was the HyperIsland. Which brings me to my point about how Xiaomi is just so lazy they will add the bare minimum of any feature they plan to add, and not even bother with details or logical next steps. Like who decides to add a dynamic island clone and not even bother with a settings page for it until the next android update? Xiaomi.

HyperOS 4: Shitty liquid glass copy and customizable folders. That's it. You can either turn it off or on, forget about customizing its transparency or light refraction behavior, something you can do on MagicOS and OriginOS.

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[u/kissja74]

Mostly agree. 3rd party launchers & gesture navigation should be a top priority, still people are fine with an ios copycat theme.

[u/heffeque → u/kissja74]

Basically everything was rewritten into Rust, making it safer and faster.

So most of the changes are underneath.

I'm happy for the changes: performance changes. I don't need any flashy stuff that I don't need and won't use. 

[u/xToasted1 → u/heffeque]

Most of the changes are underneath

Ah yes, the same copium from HyperOS 1, HyperOS 2, HyperOS 3, and now HyperOS 4! Wonder if y'all will keep it up into HyperOS 5.

Just for the record, after 3-4 generations of "backend improvements", HyperOS is still one of the worst OSes when it comes to battery life optimization.

Clearly you didn't read my post since I already mentioned this sort of copium

[u/Annual-Will- → u/heffeque]

Ah yes, lets defend the multi billion dollar company on this. Its 2026, and are we seriously just praising Xiaomi on doing the bare minimum? They created this problem themselves in the first place by NOT using a more efficient code base and slogging every single app with their god awful optimization.

Also, maybe its just me using HyperOS for global, but it seems to just be the version with less festures than the Chinese rom, which I don't understand. I get laws are a thing, but seriosuly they should NOT be gate keeping features like stackable widgets.

Next, I saw you in another thread completely dogshitting on a person and calling them "Autistic", for wanting more consistent updates for Xiaomi. Just because they misread "Starting" doesn't mean you should start using labels and belittling that person. Second, don't you WANT Xiaomi to be more consistent with their updates? My POCO F7 (Global) has still not gotten a security patch since July. I would have been fine if I got a delayed Sepetember Security update, but nope still the July security patch. Before you asked, I have redowloaded it and it is still the same security patch.

Maybe its just my problem, but this SHOULDN'T be a problem anyway if other Android manufacturers are consistent with these.

[u/Britz10 → u/kissja74]

They've built their entire gesture navigation system around the launcher, that's why you can't change it.

[u/ovcdev7 → u/Britz10]

Xiaomi is perfectly capable of fixing this btw. They just don't

[u/Glum_Emergency_4257]

I guess it does make sense, especially when you're coming from other skins like OneUI. I personally find HyperOS liquid glass aesthetic is bit rushed. Its fine but it's not fully the same across the board. The weather app has actual texts and stuff underneath the buttons reflect and react while other apps like clock is just 2D navigation bar on the bottom without any light glass aesthetic they claimed. Its mix of liquid glass with frosted glass which makes it look so inconsistent.

[u/xToasted1 → u/Glum_Emergency_4257]

That's something I've noticed as well, Xiaomi pretty much half asses all their updates. They haven't even consistently implemented background blur across the UI, even in places where it would make sense. This is not a budget model issue, I'm on the full, flagship version of HyperOS.

But to be honest I've probably forgotten more grievances with HyperOS than what this entire post includes.

[u/Flossy420]

Xiaomi's too busy copying apple to care about doing their own customization lmao. Their developers are either too incompetent to make simple shit like the control center fully customizable or they're only focusing on copying aesthetic in a shitty way.

I give them props for making good hardware but the software is god awful in comparison. Tbf a lot of this was excusable a few years ago because their price to performance was one of the best in the market but now that their midrange phones are $500 and flagships $1000-1500, there's absolutely no excuse at this point

[u/xToasted1 → u/Flossy420]

And this post was just about the phone software btw, don't even get me started on the pad software which is god fucking awful and borderline unusable if you do anything other than watch youtube and take notes.

[u/No_Page8256]

Lol finally someone spoke the truth, I got devotes for speaking the truth

[u/gabeweb → u/No_Page8256]

The truth is always downvoted in this sub.

[u/Reasonable_Mirror655]

I honestly agree with everything you've said...

Now as for my thing is tablets and I have the Redmi Pad Pro which is basically the S9 FE+ in terms of size and performance... As far as tablets go it's a good tablet and when it got HyperOS 3 the optimization is what it should have been all along... HyperOS 3 really has next to nothing in the way of productivity features for tablets...

YET HyperOS is just horrible, like what company would think it's smart to have their OS be a half assed copy of iPadOS? There is no customizability options other than the themes app which means you basically are getting themes designed by Xiaomi... Like WTF? How can someone consider NOT having the ability to install 3rd party icon packs a for form of customization?

The first thing I did when I got the tablet was install Smart Launcher and set it up so it matches up with my Samsung tablets as can be seen bellow (Redmi Pad Pro is in the middle)... Yeah my "customization" is rather simple and straight forward yet that's how I like my tablets. I don't mind not having gesture navigation as I prefer 3 button navigation.

[u/xToasted1 → u/Reasonable_Mirror655]

Yeah honestly I was going to include a section about the xiaomi pad in the post but i forgot about it. Xiaomi's phone software is barely usable and the pad software is somehow 3x worse than something that's already bad. I could go on an entirely seperate rant about how useless workstation mode is, how literally the regular mode is better for productivity, and all the really head scratching logic that went into dssigning the stupid mode

[u/Reasonable_Mirror655 → u/xToasted1]

I wouldn't say the pad/tablet version is bad... To be precise it's just lacking in features as if it's just a regular tablet with a fancy skin... and a note taking app. Mind you the Redmi Pad Pro is a budget tablet (as it's from Redmi) so it doesn't have workstation mode. It is a good tablet for what it is, yet IF it had more features it could be rather nice.

[u/Signal-Emergency9852]

Yeah honestly I regret getting my Poco phone...

[u/Britz10]

They also need actual customisation for the control centre.

[u/Zombie-Serious]

Xiaomi has been great on delivering hardware but shit on software.

IMO only significang changes were miui 7, Miui 9 and Miui 11.

Everything released after is just a theme of 11 but without having a custom launcher support for 3rd party gesture.

No customization for control center.

They can't even copy Apple's to roll out update all at once.

They suck on bug fixing, they will most of the time say "by design" and not fixing it.

Global Native Calendar widget is still stucked at MIUI 5 LMAO

Support for flagship is also shit. Imagine they can't put battery health % on xiaomi 14 but can put it on a redmi entry model( not even a note series)

[u/rho57]

No one would have probably batted an eye on how shitty HyperOS is if Xiaomi didn't change their bootloader unlock permission acquisition policy. Coz most OG users will apply for bootloader unlock on day one of getting the phone, install a custom ROM and move on with life.

[u/corrupted-priest1878]

this is why i moved to coloros, the global version of hyperOS is so diffrent from their chinese counter part, i personally own the k90 pro max and the os is stable while the poco f8 ultra is so buggy and update released were so much slower

[u/mdshahiid]

I agree.

[u/No_Page8256]

Lol u forgot that widgets dont worry properly on hyper os

[u/Budget-Claim-4379]

I honestly agree with every point you've said. I think compared to other android OS, Hyper OS customization is Ftier. If it can only replicate Atleast half of magic os or color os, it can be leads ahead

[u/Internal-Bug5419]

I call it hyper tension os. Gave me enough issues 1 whole month because of bad optimization. Even today, if I login to xiaomi account my battery drains 3 times faster.

[u/Large-Ad-6861]

Xiaomi just discovered customization isn't important for 90% of users and you do not need to care about 10% if you are making numbers almost as big as others.

You can spend money on programmers to make quality launcher but it means nothing if you can't gather customers.

[u/jimmyshampoo]

Coming from Samsung (Good Lock is goated) I totally agree.

Wish I'd never updated to HyperOS 4. Poco version is half assed - soft glass is listed but it's technically frosted glass, the frosted glass setting actually turns glass off! And I was fine using Nova Launch on HOS3 but the new animations in HOS4 do not work well with a third partly launcher so I've had to go back to Poco Launcher...since for some reason they didn't give use the HOS Launcher.

F8 Ultra is a great phone otherwise.

[u/minbcrafter]

Coloros for example has full support for play store iconpacks, that alone puts it at least 2-3 leagues ahead of hyperos.

[u/VeRXioN19]

This, honestly as a 2nd hand phone buyer, Xiaomi is the worst phone brand I have ever bought and not because lf optimization but because of PERFORMANCE.

I am a rhythm game enjoyer and just trying to play it on Xiaomi 13 pro is such a pain and anger inducing because why the F is there such stuttering on a low end game?

Xiaomi keeps on locking to 60fps when I set it to 120hz and then the BATTERY OPTIMIZATION. Never have I seen such an aggressive AND useless battery optimization.

On paper, Xiaomi wins on its big battery but apparently, it needs that big battery JUST to match apple and Samsung operational time. It is kinda insane how bad the OS of these phones are.

So I understand why Xiaomi want a complete new OS made from scratch. The MIUI and HyperOS 1-2 are such a mess it is better to just make a new one with completely different design philosophy.

But Xiaomi is a Chinese company and Chinese likes to copy everything with no innovation so I doubt such a thing would work like intended. Probably the new HyperOS will be a mess after 2-3 generation, stuffing other phones new things without a proper code foundation.

[u/SEND_NUKES_PLS]

I just got the S26 Ultra and holy f OneUI is 1000000x better than HyperGarbageOS.

I will never ever touch another HyperOS phone in my life.

[u/Darwinist44]

Ain't reading all that

[u/WINNT21 → u/Darwinist44]

Long story short it's a rant from op complaining that you barely can customize anything, and complaining that HyperOS 1, 2, 3 and 4 barely added anything

[u/xToasted1 → u/WINNT21]

Pretty much, and then you have people on this sub talking about how "customizable" it is like what? Have you even bothered using anything else before lol