MIUI Decrypt illustration: even a phone that won't start still holds its Secret Album files - ADB, TWRP and LSA Decrypt form your recovery chain.
Assess the situation: what kind of boot failure is it?
The moment your Xiaomi, Redmi, or POCO phone refuses to start, it is natural to panic - especially if irreplaceable photos and videos are locked inside the Secret Album. Take a breath. In the vast majority of cases the encrypted files are still sitting on the internal storage, perfectly intact. The phone's operating system may be broken, but the flash memory chip that holds your data is almost certainly fine. Your job now is to find the gentlest way to reach those files without making the situation worse.
Start by observing exactly what happens when you press the power button. The behaviour tells you which recovery path to follow. A bootloop - where the device restarts endlessly on the MIUI or HyperOS logo - is the most common scenario and also the most recoverable because it means the storage subsystem is functional. A phone that vibrates once and then stays on a black screen may have a display or motherboard issue, which narrows your options but does not eliminate them. A device that shows absolutely no sign of life (no vibration, no LED) likely has a battery or power-circuit problem; charge it for thirty minutes before drawing conclusions.
Once you know the failure type, work through the methods below in order. Each one is less convenient than the last but reaches deeper into the device. If you are unsure which encrypted files you are looking for, our .lsa and .lsav file format guide explains what MIUI stores and where. The important rule at this stage is simple: do not factory-reset the phone, do not flash a new ROM, and do not wipe the cache partition until you have a copy of the Secret Album directory on another device.
Try Safe Mode to access data without flashing
Safe Mode boots MIUI with only the core system services running, which sidesteps most software crashes that cause bootloops. If the failure was triggered by a misbehaving app, a broken theme, or a corrupted cache, Safe Mode will often load all the way to the home screen. From there you have full access to the file manager and USB file transfer - no special tools required.
To enter Safe Mode on most Xiaomi devices, power the phone off completely (hold the power button for ten seconds or until it vibrates). Then press and hold the power button again. The moment the MIUI or HyperOS logo appears, release the power button and immediately hold the volume-down button. Keep holding it until the home screen appears with a small "Safe Mode" watermark in the bottom-left corner. If the phone is bootlooping too fast for this timing, try holding both the power and volume-down buttons from a fully powered-off state.
Once you are inside Safe Mode, open the default file manager and navigate to the Secret Album storage path. On most MIUI versions this is MIUI/Gallery/cloud/secretAlbum, though HyperOS may use DCIM/.secretalbum. You will see files ending in .lsa (encrypted photos) and .lsav (encrypted videos). Connect a USB cable to your computer and copy the entire directory - or use a USB OTG flash drive if you do not have a cable handy. Do not open Gallery to "check" the files first; that risks triggering the same crash that caused the bootloop.
If Safe Mode fails to load - the device still loops or freezes - move on to ADB extraction. The files are not lost; you simply need a lower-level tool to reach them.
Android Debug Bridge (ADB) communicates with your phone over USB even when the full operating system is not running. If you enabled USB debugging before the phone died - a setting found under Settings → Additional Settings → Developer Options - the device may still respond to ADB commands while stuck on the boot screen or in recovery mode. This is often the fastest path to your Secret Album files when Safe Mode is not an option.
Install the Android SDK Platform Tools on your computer (available for Windows, macOS, and Linux from Google's developer site). Connect the phone and run adb devices in a terminal. If the phone appears in the device list - even with a "recovery" or "sideload" tag - you can pull files. Use the following command to copy the entire Secret Album directory:
adb pull /sdcard/MIUI/Gallery/cloud/secretAlbum/ ./recovered-secret-album/
If that path returns an error, the directory may have been relocated by a MIUI update. Search for all encrypted files with adb shell find /sdcard -name "*.lsa" and adb shell find /sdcard -name "*.lsav". Pull every match to your computer. It is better to grab extra files and sort later than to miss a critical photo.
When ADB does not recognise the device at all - usually because USB debugging was never enabled - you need to boot into a custom recovery environment that enables file access by default. That is where TWRP comes in.
Use TWRP custom recovery to copy files
TWRP (Team Win Recovery Project) is a custom recovery image that replaces the stock MIUI recovery partition. It provides a touch-screen file manager, ADB access, and the ability to mount internal storage - all without booting MIUI itself. For phones with an unlocked bootloader, TWRP is the most reliable way to access data on a device that will not start normally.
To flash TWRP, first boot into fastboot mode: power the phone off, then hold the power button and volume-down button simultaneously until the "FASTBOOT" screen appears. Connect the phone to your computer and run fastboot flash recovery twrp-your-device.img, replacing the filename with the correct image for your model (download it from the official TWRP website). Once the flash completes, boot into recovery by holding power and volume-up. TWRP should greet you with its main menu.
Be aware that this method requires an unlocked bootloader. If your bootloader is still locked, you will need to apply for an unlock through Xiaomi's official tool first. On most Xiaomi models, unlocking the bootloader triggers a factory reset - which would erase the files you are trying to save. If your bootloader is locked and Safe Mode plus ADB have both failed, skip ahead to the EDL mode section before attempting an unlock.
Inside TWRP, tap Advanced → File Manager and browse to the Secret Album path. Verify that your .lsa and .lsav files are present. Connect a USB OTG drive, mount it through TWRP's storage options, and copy the entire directory. Alternatively, enable MTP mode in TWRP's mount menu and transfer files directly to your computer. Always copy the files rather than moving them - if the transfer is interrupted halfway, the originals remain safe on the phone.
Emergency Download (EDL) mode as a last resort
Emergency Download mode is a low-level Qualcomm protocol that bypasses everything - MIUI, Android, the bootloader, even fastboot. It communicates directly with the phone's storage chip through a special diagnostic port. EDL mode is the final option when the bootloader is locked, ADB is unavailable, and the phone will not enter fastboot. It is also the approach professional data-recovery labs use for physically damaged devices.
Entering EDL mode varies by model. On many Xiaomi phones you can trigger it by holding both volume buttons while connecting the USB cable, or by shorting specific test points on the motherboard (a technique that requires disassembling the phone). Once the device is in EDL mode, your computer should detect a "Qualcomm HS-USB QDLoader 9008" device in the device manager. From there you need a compatible firehose programmer file for your specific chipset and a tool such as QFIL or MiFlash to read the raw storage partitions.
EDL-based extraction is not a casual operation. You are reading raw partition images, which means you will need to mount the userdata partition on a Linux machine (or use a forensic tool) to browse the file system and locate the Secret Album directory. The risk of overwriting data is real if you make a mistake, so create a full image backup of every partition before extracting individual files. If you are not comfortable with this process, it is better to take the device to a professional repair shop that advertises Qualcomm EDL recovery rather than risk permanent data loss.
Regardless of the method - Safe Mode, ADB, TWRP, or EDL - once you have the .lsa and .lsav files on your computer, the hard part is over. The files are encrypted, but the encryption is entirely self-contained. You do not need the original phone to decrypt them.
Decrypt recovered .lsa and .lsav files
With the encrypted files safely on your computer, the next step is decryption. MIUI's Secret Album uses an encryption scheme that embeds all the information needed for decryption - the salt, initialisation vector, and key derivation parameters - inside each .lsa or .lsav file. This means the decryption process does not depend on your Xiaomi phone being functional. A dedicated tool can read the metadata directly from the file and reverse the encryption.
LSA Decrypt is built specifically for this purpose. Open the tool in any browser, drag your recovered files into the upload area, and the service reads the encryption headers automatically. It performs the AES decryption on the server and returns the original JPEG, PNG, or MP4 file - ready to view, save, or import into any photo library. There is nothing to install, no Android emulator to configure, and no MIUI version matching required. If you want to understand exactly what is happening under the hood, the .lsa/.lsav format guide walks through the encryption structure in detail.
For large batches of files - common when recovering an entire Secret Album - upload them in groups of ten to fifteen. This keeps each transfer manageable and lets you verify the first batch before committing to the rest. If any file fails to decrypt, it may have been truncated during the extraction. Re-pull that specific file using whichever method you used earlier and try again. Our full recovery guide covers the complete workflow from upload through verification.
Once decrypted, treat the output files with the same care as the originals. They no longer carry Secret Album encryption, so store them in a secure location - an encrypted cloud service, a password-protected archive, or a re-imported Secret Album on a working device. If you run into any issues during the decryption step, the general troubleshooting guide covers common error messages and their solutions, or you can contact the support team directly with the file details.
Prevent this situation next time
A dead phone feels catastrophic only when there is no backup. The single most effective protection for your Secret Album is a regular, automated backup of the encrypted files to a location that is not on the phone itself. That way a bootloop, hardware failure, or even a lost device costs you nothing more than the phone hardware. Our backup guide for Secret Album files explains exactly how to set this up - including what to copy, where to store it, and how often to refresh the backup.
Beyond backups, a few habits dramatically reduce the risk of being locked out of your own memories:
- Enable USB debugging now, while the phone is working. This single setting is the difference between a simple ADB pull and a multi-hour TWRP or EDL recovery. Find it under Settings → Additional Settings → Developer Options.
- Unlock the bootloader proactively. Xiaomi's unlock process requires a waiting period of up to seven days. Completing it in advance means TWRP is always available as a fallback without risking a factory reset under pressure.
- Copy Secret Album files after every major MIUI update. Updates occasionally relocate the encrypted directory or change the encryption parameters, making older backups less useful.
- Test your backups. Periodically decrypt a sample file through LSA Decrypt to confirm the backup is complete and the encryption metadata is intact. A backup you have never tested is a backup you cannot trust.
- Document your device details. Keep a note of your MIUI version, ROM channel (Global, EEA, China), and bootloader status. This information saves hours if you ever need to work with TWRP or EDL mode in an emergency.
Recovery from a dead phone is stressful, but it is almost always possible when the storage chip is intact. The methods in this guide - Safe Mode, ADB, TWRP, EDL - cover every level of severity from a simple software glitch to a catastrophic hardware failure. Pair them with LSA Decrypt for the final decryption step and you have a complete chain that brings your Secret Album photos and videos back without ever needing the original phone to boot again.
Helpful Resources
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