Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus Tips and Tricks

While the stock standard keyboard is fine, there are much better keyboards available for the Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus.

First, you need to go to the Play Store and download one. Try searching for the word ‘keyboard’ and you will see a number of options.

One of the best keyboards is a keyboard called Swiftkey, which is a top-rated App. This will literally change the way you feel about your phone as the standard keyboard can be quite a frustrating experience.

Download your chosen keyboard and go through any install steps that you are presented with.

If you see a warning saying the keyboard will collect all information (including credit cards) just ignore this. This is just a security feature that Android shows for every third-party keyboard that you install.

Then, go to the App you want to type in. You should now see a little Keyboard icon on the row at the bottom of your screen, towards the bottom-right corner. Press that icon and you can switch between all of the keyboards you have installed.

Some other notable keyboards that work on the Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus are GO Keyboard and Gboard (the Google Keyboard). Download and install your keyboard app of choice. Once that’s done, follow these steps to switch your current keyboard to that newly installed one:

1. You can click on your newly installed keyboard app (icon).
2. Most of them can assist you on how to switch your keyboard.
3. Just follow the instructions from the new keyboard app.

How to Switch Your Phone’s Default Keyboard to A New One

You can follow the steps above because most keyboard apps can assist you when it comes to switching the default keyboard to theirs. However, you can also do it manually by going to your Phone Settings. Just follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings and scroll down or look for the “System” sub-menu.
2. Under “System,” tap “Language and Keyboard” or “Language and Input.”
3. Tap “Default Keyboard” and select the new keyboard app.

Depending on your unit and model, this method could vary. For those who can’t find the “Default Keyboard” option, you can follow these steps:

1. Under “Language and Input,” you need to look for Virtual Keyboards → Manage Keyboards.
2. Tap your keyboard of choice to activate it.
3. You will get a message of confirmation. Just tap “OK.”
4. Open your keyboard. You can do this by trying to write a message, email or search.
5. Then tap the keyboard icon.
6. Choose the Input Method (tap on your preferred keyboard).

Done! You can change your Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus keyboard’s theme, predictive text, and other settings by opening its menu. You can do this by locating the keyboard icon on your home screen, or by tapping on the settings icon when you open the keyboard for typing.

To stop the Photo App or the Music player from indexing your files, place a blank text file called .nomedia in the folder containing your photos or music.

The best way to do this is to connect your device to a PC and then navigate to the relevant folder via your PC.

Sometimes while typing long text or SMS messages you will get a message saying Converting to multimedia message. This won’t normally cause a problem, however some users do not want to send a MMS message.

There are a number of different settings to deal with this, however there isn’t really a way to prevent the phone from converting to an MMS. The reason for this is that any message over 480 characters cannot be sent as an SMS message. They must be sent as an MMS. The is a restriction of SMS messages in general, similar to the original limit of 160 characters.

What you can do however is ensure you get alerted when you have reached 480 characters. Then you can decide to send the message as an SMS and continue your conversation on a second message.

To check this setting is on, open your Message App and press More – Settings and More Settings – Multimedia messages. Then select Set restrictions and choose Warning. You will now be told when your message is being converted to MMS.

You can also change the settings for Creation mode which lets you restrict messages that go over a certain size. If you select Warning or Restricted, you should get further warnings when your message is really large and may not be handled by the network.

Note: This availability of this feature depends on your device.

If you find yourself woken up by notifications, text messages or incoming calls, then there is a handy feature called Blocking mode.

To enable this go to Settings – Device – Sounds and notifications – Do not disturb.

From here you can set a From and To time in which to block these notifications.

You can also allow notifications through from certain contacts that you don’t mind bothering you.

Rather than having to locate the hang up icon on the screen after each call, you can quickly end a call by pressing the Power button.

To enable this feature, go to Settings – Personal – Accessibility – Answering/ending calls. Then tick The power button ends calls.

There are a number of solutions to this error. Go through the following steps:

Go to Settings – Applications – Application manager. Then swipe right to left to go to All (along the top). Then find the App called Media Storage. Click on that and select Force Close. Then select Clear Data. (warning: this will delete the cache for your media player so you may lose things such as recently played, most played etc. But you will not lose your music).

Next, go back to list of Apps and find Music Player. Again, press Force Close and then Clear Data.

Once that’s done, go to the Play Store and download an App called Re Scan Media and run it. Wait 5 minutes for the device to re-scan your media.

If you still cannot play your music, then try turning your phone off and removing your SDCard / memory card (if you have one). Then turn the phone on without the card. Then turn it off again and reinsert the card. Finally turn it on again with the card back in.

If you still can’t play music, then some users have said that there may be a conflict with the Twitter App. Try uninstalling this and see if the error persists.

You can also try downloading some new media player from Play Store and try running media on this new player.

To adjust your screen brightness, there are two options:

1) Simply drag your finger from the top of the phone down to pull down your quick settings screen. Then at the top there will be a brightness bar. Drag this left or right or press Auto.

2) Drag your notifications screen down and select Settings. Then under Device, select Display – Brightness. Then choose the desired brightness setting.

You can also select Automatic brightness to let the phone decide for you.

If you see an insufficient storage available error, or find that you’re running low on your phone memory (not to be confused with your SD Card memory), then there are a number of ways to fix this.

This error can be very frustrating as it often means you cannot install new Apps, and some Apps may not even function properly because of this. We hope this guide is as comprehensive as possible, but if you find other methods, then please suggest them in the comments below.

The first step is to determine exactly what is eating up your phone’s storage memory. To do this pull down your notifications menu and select Settings and find Storage. It may take a while to calculate so be patient. From here you can see whether it is your Applications, Pictures, Audio or otherwise, that is causing the problem. Obviously, if it is photos or music, then the first step is to remove some of these (ensuring you do actually want them deleted of course!).

If it is your Apps taking up space, then you have a few options, as follows:

Uninstall Apps – Go to Settings – Applications – Application Manager and swipe to the ALL tab at the top. Then look at the top of the screen which shows how much free space you have. Often you will have very little Free memory, which is the cause of the error. From here, press your Menu button and select Sort by size. This will show you which Apps take up the most space and which will make the most impact by removing. Obviously don’t delete things like Gallery (which will remove your photos!), Internet (which is your browser), key Google Apps and so on. However if you have Apps you don’t use anymore, then uninstall them to free up space.

Clear App Cache (with an App) – For this method, you will need to download an App called Clear App Cache. However, this will only work if you can uninstalled enough Apps to free up enough space to install the App itself. Once installed however you can quickly clear the cache of all of your Apps, which should free up some space.

Create Cloud Storage Backup – You can also select to create back-up in Google drive. For that Go to Settings – Backup & Reset and turn Back up data ?ON? and add your back-up account (Preferably the same account from which you signed in on Play Store). Then open Google Account icon and from there you can select folders for which you want to create back-up, you can also set frequency of creating back-up e.g. daily, monthly or weekly etc. Now you can delete data from folders for which you have opted to create back, but before that please make sure that back up has been created. You can access these files by signing in to Google drive using you Gmail email and Password.

Clear App Cache (manually) – Apps such as Gallery, can sometimes generate a large cache (image thumbnails in this case) which can be cleared to free up memory. First, go to Settings – Applications – Application Manager. Then swipe from right to left until you’re on the ALL screen. Then press the Menu key and Sort by size. Then choose the largest App by pressing on it. Then select Clear Cache. Do this until you’ve cleared as much space as you can. ?

Dump your log files – This will only work on some devices, however it doesn’t cause any data loss. It simply cleans up your App log files. Go to your phone dialler App and press: *#9900# ? Then Select delete dumpstate/ logcat and hit OK.

Move Apps to SD Card (if you have one) – Settings – Applications – Application Manager. Flick from right to left until you get to SD Card. Then simply tick which Apps you’d like to move from Phone memory to SD Card memory.

Clear Browser Thumbnails – This one seems to be a bug in some versions of Android and/or some phones, but is a very quick and effective fix. Simply open your stock Android Browser, which is usually found by opening the Internet App. Then at the top right check if you have multiple tabs open. If you do, then swipe them off the screen one by one until you have none left. This can clear up hundreds of cached thumbnails which never clear unless this process is carried out. It has been known to clear several gigabytes of space for users that don’t close their tabs often. ?

Check folder/file sizes – The last method is great and involves installing an App called DiskUsage from the Play store. Once you install this it will show you which folders are the largest. You can then drill down to find out exactly what is consuming your precious space before deciding to remove the files or folders. You can also integrate the App with File Explorer Apps to easily manage your files. When it comes to removing files and folders it’s sometimes easier to do that by plugging your device into a PC and browsing the folders that way.

To take a screen shot, hold down the Volume Down and Power Buttons together (i.e. exactly the same time).

This will save the current screen to your phone’s memory card. They will be stored in the folder /Device Storage/Pictures/Screenshots. You can get to this folder by going to your My Files App.

To set your voicemail number which allows your phone to automatically input your voicemail password, then open your Dialler App.

Then press the More or Menu button and choose Call settings. Then scroll down to Voicemail settings and set a Voicemail number (you might need to check with your carrier for the correct number).

Depending on your carrier you may have to enter the series of steps required to go through the voicemail menu, for example: *86,,yourpassword# (a comma inserts a pause).