So you’ve got your new Xiaomi phone, whether it be the Mi3, Mi4, Redmi Note or another of Xiamoi’s devices, and you’re ready to start getting all the apps you can handle downloaded to your new device, but then a problem arises! It seems that no matter what connection you use you’re constantly impeded by the strange WiFi-only limitation for downloads, whether it be the browser or within an app, you can’t seem to download any files larger than 1MB. This was even the case on apps like the Google Play Store that normally let you choose whether or not you want to use WiFi or you don’t care, and seems to be some universal download management within this phone.
Well it looks like you guessed right in this case, because Xiaomi is very good about bandwidth management on their operating system, and as such there’s an incredibly small threshold set by default on the device. Thankfully this is an easy fix, and it can be found by going to the Downloads app. Once in here click the little gear icon on the top right of the app to enter the settings for the app, and you’ll find the data usage slider right there. This controls all data usage and downloads on a system level, and I’ve found that even with WiFi on it will often restrict your downloads until it feels confident that you aren’t using a metered cell data connection. This was even the case with hotspots for me, as it assumed that was actually a metered cell data connection and wouldn’t allow me to download anything. Setting this to a more reasonable limit than 1MB is great, but if you want to disable it altogether you can just change it to unlimited. Now you should be able to download anything you want on any connection that makes you feel good, so get to it! If you don’t have your own Xiaomi Mi4 you can buy the 16GB version here, and the 64GB version here!