Although it may be a bit difficult to imagine for owners of most smartphones, not all user interfaces have an app drawer for access to apps on a device. One of those is the MIUI interface produced by Xiaomi for their smartphones. Despite a base of over 250 million users, the company just now appears to be preparing to roll out this feature, along with app shortcuts, in an upcoming update to the user interface.
Like many other user interfaces that exist, some early alpha build screenshots of the new app drawer feature for MIUI show it being accessed via a dedicated button in the dock at the bottom of the screen. At least as presently implemented in the early builds, the app drawer is not accessible via a quick swipe up or some other gesture. Once open, it appears to function as expected with access to installed apps and dedicated area at the top for quick access to recently used apps.
Another feature that appears to finally be in the pipeline to a released build from Xiaomi is app shortcuts. These are the small menus that pop up when you long press on an app's icon. Not all apps make shortcut options available, but they can be useful for device owners who are looking for quick ways to jump right in to some tool or feature of an app.
Xiaomi has not indicated when these new features will be available to users. A safe guess is that they hope to have them ready for MIUI 11, which is scheduled to launch sometime this year.
source: AndroidCentral
