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Journalism of Courage
With the introduction of its new Material You design guidelines, Google gave Android a fresh makeover that updated its ageing appearance from Android 11. OEMs quickly adapted the bold UI design to their Android skins, adding their own distinctive touches.
Almost two years later, Material You is supported by nearly every Android skin out there. But there’s one exception – MIUI. Xiaomi’s custom skin has yet to offer a proper system-level Material You integration and most of its apps remain looking the way they did over a couple of years ago. However, this seems to be changing.
On MIUI 14 based on Android 13, Xiaomi has quietly slipped in a feature that lets users change the colours of the icons on MIUI Launcher between Blue, Green, Purple, and Brown. When a colour is selected, supported app icons on both home screen and app drawer immediately switch to a more homogenised look, similar to what you get on the Google Pixels (or just about every other Android skin now, really).
Unfortunately, not all app icons are supported, so purists might want to exclude unsupported icons from the home screen for the proper Material You experience.
But while this snag is common across all Android skins – and will remain so until Google does something radical about it – Xiaomi’s implementation is odd because none of its own system apps supports it. This half-bakedness could explain why the company has shied away from mentioning the feature at all on any of its MIUI 14 promo material.
Another peculiarity is the fact that the icon colours don’t respond to the wallpaper palette at all. You can only pick between the Blue, Green, Purple, and Brown presets, meaning if you wish that icon colours to reflect the current wallpaper, you’d have to change them manually instead.
Quirks aside, you can change your home screen icons to the colour of your choice by following the steps below.
1. Long press on the home screen
2. Tap the settings icon
3. Tap More
4. Navigate to Icon size and change Background colour
Just note that you’d have to be on MIUI 14 based on Android 13 beforehand because older versions don’t show the option.
