I recently bought the Miyoo Mini Plus¹ and I love it so far. Out of the box it’s already set up so you can just turn it on and jump into your favorite game but there is also a lot of room for customizability and improvements on this little handheld.

If you’re anything like me then first moments with a new toy like this are always bittersweet. On one hand, I am eager to start using it but also I want to make sure I read everything and and have a huge FOMO when it comes to customizations and optimizations. Now, there are already a bunch of great tutorials online²³ so I’m not going to repeat already well-known recipes. Instead, I’m going to document a few, rarely mentioned quirks that would’ve saved me some precious minutes when I first got my hands on this device.

Get a proper SD card

I know, this one is actually mentioned in each and every Mini Plus article you bump into but it is like that for a reason and it’s going to set a stage for couple of next ones in here. So in short: get a decent SD card since these things are suffering through a lot of reads and writes as you play and the default one that comes with these devices is really bad.

Personally, I went with SandDisk Extreme 64GB. If you want to play a lot of multi-disk PS1 games or looking to set up something like the Done Set⁴, 64 gigs may not be enough but I prefer to keep a hand-picked game library on it so I have more than I need with this one.

I suggest keeping the default card around since it’s a good source of game roms.

SD card readers compatibility

My SandDisk card came with a handy card adapter that I can just plug into my macbook so I thought I’m just going to keep that one around for both my new card and in case I want to transfer something from the card that came with the device. It took me a couple of tries to figure out that SandDisk SD adapter does not work with with the card that comes with the Mini Plus. This may be common knowledge for you SD people out there but, as someone that uses SD cards once in a decade, this came as a surprise to me.

Since my Mini Plus came with a USB card reader, I ended up using that one for both cards. There is also a lot of word online about the quality of these readers but, so far, mine has been holding up pretty well.

Trouble with WiFi connection

Also surprisingly, the built-in network manager, regardless of the custom OS you may be using⁵, has a couple of very major limitations:

1. 5GHz WiFi networks are not supported - It’s just not able to see them at all
2. Network names that contain special characters don’t work - This one is a bit harder to figure out because the network is visible and trying to connect to it will give you a generic error message.

And I had problems with both. My home network has both 5GHz and 2.4GHz version under the same SSID so the first issue wasn’t really blocking me from connecting, it just took me a while figuring out that 5GHz networks are just ignored by the Miyoo network manager.

But the second one was a real issue since my home network has & in it’s name and changing the SSID wasn’t really an option since that meant updating every other device in my household.

Now an easy way to get around this is by installing an app called better-wifi-miyoo⁶ which has a simple UI that allows you connect to your 2.4GHz networks with full character support.

But you can also do it manually in case you don’t want to use any third-party app. In short, you need to enter your network name and password in the wpa_supplicant.conf file. The file is located in the folder named appconfigs. Important thing here is that this folder is on your device storage, not the SD card, so you’ll have to use the on-device file explorer to locate and edit it. Here are the steps (I am using OnionOS⁷ here, so not sure what are the steps for other systems):

1. Install the File Explorer app⁸ using the OnionOS Package Manager
2. Locate the appconfigs/wpa_supplicant.conf file using the File Explorer (if it’s not there create one)
3. Edit the file so it looks like this:

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
update_config=1

network={
	ssid="<YOUR_NETWORK_NAME>"
	psk="<YOUR_WIFI_PASSWORD>"
}

When editing, the on-screen keyboard will show the default character page by default, so if you are not able to find the character you are looking for (in my case &), press the R button to switch these pages. After saving and restarting the device you should be connected.

If you are using the better-wifi-miyoo app, this is exactly what it’ll do under the hood for you when you set your wifi network trough it’s UI.

My device only charges when it’s off

I still haven’t been able to actually figure out if this is the default behavior since there are different claims about this online but my Mini Plus is only able to charge when it’s turned off.

The only proof of this is this quote from Gemini AI search:

The Miyoo Mini Plus naturally handles charging best while powered off. Plugging a live charger into a powered-on unit can trigger power-state conflicts or shut the device down due to lack of USB-PD fast-charge support.

This does seem like it has been made up so take it with a grain of salt. I will try reseting the battery and some other usual troubleshooting steps to see if it helps.

Also you won’t be able to use any fancy chargers or cables, like fast charging cables or your laptop brick, since the Mini Plus requires a USB-A to USB-C cable paired with a standard 5V / 1A or 5V / 1.5A power brick.