Miyoo Mini and Mini Plus Setup Guide

Whether you’re just dipping your toes into the handheld emulation pool, or you’ve got an entire collection of options at your disposal, the Miyoo Mini and Mini+ remain fantastic devices for all fans of classic gaming. The small (or smaller, depending on your choice) form factor in a familiar package makes these devices some of the favorites of the hobby.

If you’ve just received one as a gift and want to make the most of it, or you’ve had the device for a while and are curious about what other options might be out there, we hope to have you covered with this guide.

Table of Contents

Specs

What You’ll Need

Firmware Options

Extras

Where to Buy

Miyoo Mini and Miyoo Mini Plus Specs

What You’ll Need

• A trusted brand of micro SD card (64GB – 128GB recommended). Cards that come with these devices are of poor quality and prone to failure. If you ordered a loaded card with your device, back it up and chuck the card. It will eventually fail. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!
• An SD Card reader
• A Windows/MAC/Linux PC
• 7-zip or WinRAR to unpack any downloads
• Rufus or a similar program for easy formatting to FAT32 in Windows
• Image writing software appropriate for your firmware of choice
  • Balena Etcher – Image writing software available for all major Desktop OS’
  • Win32DiskImager – An open-source option designed for Windows, but there are many ports.
  • MintStick/USB Image Writer – Image writing software that comes baked-in with many popular Linux OS distros.

Available Firmware Options

Stock

Miyoo quite helpfully makes their stock firmware offerings available for direct download from their official website. Flashing the stock OS is a very straightforward process.

1. Select the firmware appropriate for your device. Either the Miyoo Mini V2/3, Miyoo Mini V4, or the Miyoo Mini+.
2. Format your SD card to FAT32.
3. Unzip the downloaded firmware package with the software of your choice (see above for links) and extract the .img file to the freshly formatted SD card.
4. Remove the SD card from your PC and insert it into the Miyoo Mini device, keeping the device POWERED OFF.
5. Take the device with the SD card inside and connect it to your USB charging cable (preferably just plugged into your PC).
6. You should see a rocket image on the screen, indicating that the installation process is running.
7. Once the display changes to an image of a battery charging, you may safely remove the charging cable and delete the .img file from your SD card.
8. Follow the on-screen setup tutorial on the device to properly set up storage and transfer ROMs/BIOS.

OnionOS

OnionOS is the preferred community option for many folks with a Miyoo device. The project initially aimed to make a cleaner version of the stock experience, and ended up creating something that improved the device in just about every conceivable way.

The Simple Method (Windows only): Onion-Desktop-Tools

Onion Desktop Tools

Onion Desktop Tools is a Windows software program that streamlines the entire process of upgrading the Miyoo devices.

1. Download and install Onion-Desktop-Tools on your Windows PC.
2. Load the program and insert your SD card of choice into the reader.
3. Click on the “Install or Update Onion” tab and select “Format SD Card and Install Onion”. Hit OK.
4. Select the SD card where the information will be written. Be sure you are selecting the correct disk or risk data loss.
5. The software will automatically format the card and ask you which version (stable or beta) you would like installed on the device. Choose whichever you prefer and hit “Download”.
6. Confirm you wish to install the downloaded Onion version that you just downloaded.
7. Remove the SD card from the reader, insert it in the handheld, and power on.
8. Done!

The OnionOS Manual on the Miyoo Mini V4

The Manual Method

1. Head over to the OnionOS GitHub and grab the latest stable or beta release.
2. Format your shiny new brand-name SD card to FAT32
3. Extract the downloaded .zip file to the root directory of the SD card.
4. Insert the SD card into the Miyoo device and power it on.
5. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation and learn about Onion.
6. Reinsert the SD card into your PC to load BIOS and ROM files in their respective directories now set up on the SD card.

MinUI

MinUI on the Miyoo Mini+

If you’re looking for a sleek and stripped-down experience in your OS, then MinUI might be for you. Not intended to be a visual feast, MinUI brings a “function-over-all” mentality to the handheld emulation experience, and it works incredibly well. Please note that the releases for these handhelds are not currently maintained or under active development. They should work great, but support moving forward may be limited.

The current MinUI which introduced support for multiple devices starting with the Trimui Smart, Miyoo Mini (and Plus), and the original Anbernic RG35XX was released on 2023/09/22 with the initial functional commit 6 months earlier on 2023/03/27.

1. Download the latest MinUI firmware image from the project GitHub.
2. Open the downloaded MinUI-base.zip package, and extract the zip file inside along with the corresponding directory for your device (miyoo354 folder for the Miyoo Mini+; miyoo folder for the Mini V2/3/4) to the root of a blank SD card.
   
3. Extract the contents of the MinUI-20250126-1-extras.zip package to the root directory of the SD card, where you just put the files in the previous step. It should look as it does below.
   

   This is what the contents of your SD should look like

4. Insert the SD card into the Miyoo device and power it on. You should see the MinUI logo, letting you know the image is writing the firmware.
5. After installation is complete, power down the handheld and re-insert the SD card in the PC to load all your BIOS and ROM files into their appropriate directories on the flash storage.
6. Enjoy!

Extras

Themes

Example of selectable themes in OnionOS

Stock: You can download new themes for the stock OS directly from Miyoo. Simply download the package and extract the .zip file to the “Themes” directory on your SD card.

OnionOS: The OnionOS community has an available database of user-created themes. As above, download the zip and extract the files to the “Themes” directory on your OnionOS SD card. You can also browse the different themes that are packed within the OS by browsing the Theme Switcher under Apps.

Native Pico-8

Turn on native Pico-8 access on your Miyoo

If you’ve already purchased a license to access Splore and the world of Pico-8, you’ll be able to enjoy those games on Miyoo devices. If you do not own a Pico-8 license, you can purchase one for $15 here.

1. Turn on your Miyoo OnionOS device and navigate to Apps>Package Manager>Expert.
2. Scroll down in the system options until you see Pico-8 Standalone. Enable it.
3. Take the pico8_dyn and pico8.dat files from the licensed download package and place them into the /Rapp/PICO-8/bin directory on your OnionOS SD card.
4. Reinsert the SD card into the device and select Run Pico-8 w/ Splore under the apps settings section.
5. Work on beating Ban’s best time in the Celeste challenge.

Where to buy

If you’re still in the market for the hobby favorite, consider grabbing one below and helping us keep the server lights blinking.

Miyoo V4 AliExpressMiyoo V4 AmazonMiyoo Mini Plus AliExpressMiyoo Mini Plus Amazon

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