Magic Rear

English · 简体中文

Xiaomi's rear display does a little. Magic Rear replaces it with a panel that does a lot, on the Xiaomi 18 Pro / MAX & Xiaomi 17 Pro / MAX. It used to be called AI Usage: the AI usage readout is still here, as one feature among many.

Website, guide and news: rear.896.ro

Read Please read this first before you install it. It's a personal project that needs Shizuku, and for the AI usage readout, your account's sign-in.

What it does

• Clock page: time, date, battery and a weather line, with weather on the glass when it rains, storms or snows.
• Media: cover art (square or a spinning record), progress, scrubbing, volume and synced lyrics.
• Notifications on the back: peek, open the list, swipe them away or dismiss them all.
• App Portal: pull up from the bottom edge to open your pinned apps on the back, each with its own DPI. They can keep right of the cameras, Back works, and the keyboard opens on the back.
• Control centre, always-on, pocket mode, table lights when the phone lies face down, the camera on the back, a small game, and a charging animation.
• Looks: glass or flat, fonts, a CRT screen, and backgrounds of a colour, an image, a video or a live shader (Silk, Color Bends, Liquid Metal), with parallax as the phone tilts.
• AI usage: Claude Code usage limits as rings, with a mascot per account.

Everything is set from the app on the front screen, with a live preview of the back.

Requirements

• A Xiaomi 18 Pro / MAX & Xiaomi 17 Pro / MAX. It does nothing useful on another phone.
• HyperOS 3 / 4 and newer, Android 16 / 17 and newer. It depends on system internals, so a new HyperOS version may need checking again.
• Shizuku, running. Putting anything on the rear display needs shell-level calls an ordinary app can't make; Shizuku lends them to the apps you allow.

Install

The easiest way is 896 Store: it installs Magic Rear and keeps it updated. Or download the APK from rear.896.ro or the releases.

Updating from AI Usage keeps your settings: it's the same app (dev.kb896.aiusage) with a new name.

Setup

1. Start Shizuku: Developer options → Wireless debugging on, then Start via Wireless debugging in Shizuku. It doesn't survive a reboot, so start it again after each one (its notification is the quickest way back). With a computer (Shizuku 13.6 dropped the old start.sh): adb shell 'P=$(pm path moe.shizuku.privileged.api | head -n1 | cut -d: -f2); $(dirname $P)/lib/arm64/libshizuku.so'. Every step, with screenshots and the Xiaomi / HyperOS switches: How to set up Shizuku.
2. Open Magic Rear and work down the setup list at the top of its settings. Each row opens the right screen and ticks itself when it's done:
   • allow Magic Rear in Shizuku;
   • move Xiaomi's own rear-screen app out of the way (hidden for your user, nothing deleted; one tap restores it);
   • allow notifications, and notification access if you want notifications and media on the back;
   • turn off battery restrictions and allow autostart, or HyperOS will stop it.
3. Lock it in recents, so "clear all" doesn't close it.

The panel is drawn by the app, so it has to keep running in the background.

Please read this first

Not affiliated with Anthropic, OpenAI or Xiaomi. It's a personal project by one person. "Claude" and the Claude mascot belong to Anthropic.

No data is collected: no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reports, no server of this project's own. The only places the app talks to:

https://claude.ai/oauth/authorize       sign-in, for AI usage
https://api.anthropic.com/              your usage figures
https://platform.claude.com/            your plan tier
https://lrclib.net/                     lyrics, if you turn them on
https://api.open-meteo.com/             weather, if you turn it on
https://geocoding-api.open-meteo.com/   the place you type, turned into coordinates
https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/…    checking for updates

Your sign-in stays on your phone, encrypted with a key in the Android Keystore. On a rooted or compromised phone it can still be read. Using a token outside the official client may go against your provider's terms; nobody's account has been suspended for it that I know of, but I take no responsibility for a suspended account, lost credentials or lost data. See the privacy policy.

No warranty. See LICENSE.

Building

./build-install.sh    # debug build, installed on a connected phone

The debug build is its own app, dev.kb896.aiusage.dev ("Magic Rear (dev)"), so it installs next to the release. It's debuggable: anything with ADB access can read its files, sign-in included, so use the release on the phone you carry. Releases are built by CI from version tags.

Credits

• u/Over_Squash3318 got the panel working on the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max.

Attribution

• The mascot is Anthropic's Claude mascot, rebuilt from ayotomcs.me/claude-mascot. The maker's mark is ACRNM's. Neither is covered by this repository's licence; if you own either and want it removed, open an issue.
• Fonts: Departure Mono by Helena Zhang and Outfit by Smartsheet, SIL Open Font License 1.1.
• Glass: AndroidLiquidGlass by Kyant0, Apache 2.0 (shaders vendored, controls ported from its catalog app).
• Icons: Material Symbols Rounded and Material Icons, Apache 2.0.
• Shaders: Silk, Color Bends and Electric Border from Vue Bits (DavidHDev); Liquid Metal from Paper Shaders (Apache 2.0) as metal-fx by Jakub Antalik (MIT) uses it; snow adapted from Lumine's multilayer snowfall on Godot Shaders (CC0).
• Weather data by Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0). Lyrics from LRCLIB.

Licence

MIT, for the code: see LICENSE. The third-party artwork above isn't covered by it.