Cleaning up a Xiaomi Mi TV

Xiaomi's televisions are proper Android TV, Play Store and all, but they carry their own layer on top called PatchWall. Most of what people want gone from a Mi TV lives there.

What PatchWall is

It is Xiaomi's launcher and recommendation system. It replaces or sits alongside the Android TV home screen and adds rows of content, many of them sponsored.

adb shell pm list packages | grep -iE "xiaomi|mitv|patchwall|duokan"

duokan is the internal name for much of Xiaomi's media software and turns up on older models.

What people want removed

• The PatchWall launcher, to be left with plain Android TV.
• The advertising and recommendation services.
• Preinstalled content apps aimed at the Chinese or Indian markets, which are of no use in Europe.

Order matters

If you are going to remove PatchWall, install another launcher first and check it. On Mi TVs, being left with no launcher and no alternative is particularly awkward because Xiaomi's remote depends on the launcher itself for some buttons.

We have an article on alternative launchers with options that work well on modest hardware.

A word about regions

Mi TVs sold in India and China carry different package sets from the European ones, and a good deal of the guidance circulating online was written for those models. Check your exact model before copying a list from anywhere else.

Common models

Mi TV 4A, 4S, P1 and the Q1 series. Send us yours if it is not listed.