If you have read my test of the MIUI 13, you’ll notice my complaint about the lack of Material You, ie the dynamic themes introduced with Android 12. With its latest major update, Google has abandoned the outdated Material Design in favor of a new aesthetic language.
We saw it with the launch of the Pixel 6 series: the UI integrates a new aesthetic configuration, allowing the user to make it more vibrant chromatically. Instead of relying solely on the colors chosen by the manufacturer, dynamic themes allow you to customize and set them according to your own aesthetic tastes.
The lack of dynamic themes from MIUI 13 is a penalty for Xiaomi’s software since other competitors have already embraced them. In my test I reported that they are missing, thus preventing users from choosing background colors for app and UI tinting.
It must be said, however, that at the moment Google has chosen to make it a sort of unofficial temporal exclusive for Pixel 6 and 6 Pro. This means that the integration of the “monet” code, that is the one relating to dynamic themes, is not present elsewhere.
At the moment, it is only present in the Android 12 ROMs for 6th generation Google smartphones, while it is absent on the Android 12 ROMs for all other manufacturers. As I already let you know earlier, we will probably talk about it again with the advent of the next update to Android 12.1.
However, it is also true that companies like Samsung, OPPO and Realme have still created their own version of the dynamic themes for the new One UI 4.0, ColorOS 12 and Realme UI 3.0. Why didn’t Xiaomi do it with the release of the latest MIUI 13? In reality, according to the latest testimonials, dynamic themes have been spotted in the latest version of the MIUI 13 Beta. Consequently, it would only be a matter of time for these to also be introduced on Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphones.
Since this is a functionality in the Beta phase, however, the dynamic themes proposed by MIUI 13 work in a limited way. According to those who have already tried it firsthand, their application is only valid for Google apps and other third-party apps that provide for their compatibility. For the moment, therefore, the dynamic themes color neither the Xiaomi apps nor the MIUI UI, that is, elements such as Control Center, menus, drop-downs, folders and so on. We will have to wait for the next Beta or the release of the next stable updates to understand if it will remain so or not.