Xiaomi updates MIUI 10

Xiaomi updates MIUI 10’s Digital Wellbeing feature with the ability to set App Limits

Xiaomi maintains separate update pipelines for its own custom Android overlay skin, MIUI, and Android updates. This permits the company to bring new features and UI elements to older smartphones by upgrading MIUI version even without updating the Android version. One such feature which we spotted in MIUI was a replica of Android’s Digital Wellbeing. While Digital Wellbeing was only introduced with Android 9 Pie, Xiaomi has been testing a resembling feature on MIUI beta builds and we might even witness it on older versions of Android including Oreo.

The previous version of Xiaomi’s Digital Wellbeing clone we saw earlier primarily focused on screen time, the number of notifications received, and the frequency of unlocking the phone. The feature also allowed for setting an alert timer for the overall screen usage time. Now, the feature is getting more refined and garnering additional features from the original Digital Wellbeing.

We have now learned that Xiaomi’s version of the feature is now getting separate timers for each individual app. Just like Digital Wellbeing on a host of Android Pie devices, the feature in MIUI will allow users to monitor time per each app separately. They will be able to set timers for each app and after the period elapses, that particular app will be unavailable to use. Of course, users can edit the time limit to continue using the app but the alert should be able to serve as a cautionary notice for most of them.

Additionally, there is an option to set screen time alerts for weekdays and weekends separately. We would also like to see the option of turning off the weekend timers completely for the sake of certain apps but that does not seem to be available currently.

For now, MIUI’s Digital Wellbeing is available in MIUI 10 beta and we hope it is released on the stable channel as well. If not MIUI 10, we can definitely expect to see the feature maturing with MIUI 11, which should launch soon. Furthermore, we also hope Xiaomi’s Digital Wellbeing clone does not slow down smartphones which Google’s feature has been blamed for.