My setup is: dark mode, color filters tint red, brightness 0, and reduce white point. It’s almost completely unusable in regular lit rooms, but nice in complete darkness (mostly apps like Instapaper).
The main issue I have is that blue text is unreadable. I wish you could stack color filters like grayscale first, then red tint.
I use that. It’s nice. I just wish I could mix it with black and white mode because the way the filter works makes blue things unreadable and it generally messes with color rendering more than it would need to.
Using my phone in grayscale convinced me of the power of shiny colours. It is shocking how boring my phone feels in grayscale.
This really does help break any feeling of attachment to the device and the solutions in this post really do make it more practical. It does kind of suck using the camera in grayscale.
No need to get specific. Look at any retail packaging. Look at any advertisement. Bright and shiny always gets the attention. You've never read anyone reply "ooh, grayscale". It's always "Ooooh, shiny"
Originally I had grayscale mode on and it reduced my phone usage a ton, but I stopped because it got in the way of photos and camera, things like that. I changed to using the triple click accessibility shortcut but I found it relied too much on me having to remember to turn the grayscale mode back on. This automates it so I’ll try it and hopefully it helps reduce phone usage more.
I just recently got an eink phone to focus more and work/do stuff in sunlight (always sunny here); samsung and iPhone kept overheating and are barely readable in some cases, even just having a coffee in the morning. It really helps focus on just spending my time in the terminal or in chat for instance and, while it actually really nice to work in one app, switching sucks so it works well. I could not have it as my only device, but next to an iPhone or android, it is been great so far.
I've bound toggling greyscale on/off to pressing the lock-button 3 times, makes it very easy to switch back/forth when you need it, but still be able to leave it greyscale most of the time.
More like an accessibility setting that has widespread utility (there are several others, e.g. iOS has built-in background noise generators in accessibility)
That said, tapping on the back of the phone didn’t register consistently enough for me to utilize. I tried setting flashlight to that action. When I wanted it to work it wouldn’t. Then when I would be absentmindedly tapping it would activate.
It’s an “accessibility” feature. You can assign an action to double and triple tap. But it’s very inconsistent. It doesn’t work half the time and it will trigger randomly if you move your phone funny.
Have been in using greyscale on and off to reduce my screen time. Due the issues that the author reported I switched back and changed the icon colors to monocolor grey with black wallpaper to atleast keep the phone default UI color free.
The first behaviour it changed is making app logos of Instagram, YouTube, Reddit stand out. Some of these apps became a reflex click when I unlock my phone usually as a fidget. Greyscale takes away the lure of these app icons.
Love the shortcuts tip. Setting it up to see if I can sustain greyscale full time now.
This is such a clever way to automate so that the setup actually works. I just set it up, and wonder why the author didn’t set it up to trigger grayscale on app opening. I noticed that app switching also isn’t considered closing an app, so it seems most reliable to trigger on app open as well as close
I’ve been doing exactly this (with the shortcuts) for almost 3 years now. I don’t think it’s as powerful as I would like but it’s certainly helped. I do wish more apps worked in grayscale (calendar I’m looking at you) but that’s on my long list of grievances.
My addiction isn’t the phone, it’s the computer, Youtube specifically. And I can’t use greyscale due to creative Photoshop work. Kingdom to whomever solves my problem.
it is much easier just to set up accessibility color filter and then toggle greyscale mode with Winkey+Ctrl+C and you can keep using your apps without installing anything
I don't know of any way to control the setting automatically (sometimes there are special-permission non-standard/undocumented intents for settings though), but as a maybe-close-enough you can turn on grayscale color correction (in accessibility -> color & motion, in my phone) and add a quick-settings tile to toggle it.
I'm on a Pixel 10 for these instructions, not sure if other manufacturers offer the same options.
Modes is an available option in the tile list. You can go to Modes, create a custom mode, and under display options you can set greyscale. You can also set modes to turn on automatically based on calendar events or a schedule. Notification tweaks are also available in the same area.
Having it in the tile list makes it super easy - make sure the Modes tile is near the top, so it becomes a single swipe to switch it on and off.
But app contrast is generally better on Android than on iOS (in particular, Google Maps is perfectly usable in greyscale on Android) so you might find you don't need to switch it as often as you might think.
Agreed, it's pretty rare that you'll need to turn it off. The default theming color selection does a good job making sure that lightness is different, so virtually all not-completely-custom-styled apps work with all kinds of color blindness.
You can also use one of the accessibility shortcuts to trigger it quickly (both volume buttons held, triple tap, two fingers from bottom) if so configured
This is fantastic! I had greyscale on many years ago, but I had to turn turn colours back on for google maps... but this trick allows me to have my cake and eat it too!
Looking at the example images, I was actually shocked that the app was so low contrast in B&W to be unusable. At least apps from Apple/Google. I would have expected their usability teams to be all over it, while expecting smaller app devs to need a pass on this.
Probably not. OLED screens use less energy the more absolute dark pixel in the screen, and darker anything (can be greyscale or color) consume somewhat less than brighter anything, but greyscale on its own usually don't change how much absolute dark and darker pixels being displayed, unless you also tweak the brightness. Usually, the color filter is applied at the end of the process, so the GPU don't get to skip any calculation.
If it makes you use your device less, then you do save energy a bit.
Doubtful, the screen is still the same, same amount of light is getting projected, same amount of graphics calculations is still happening. If there's any impact it's probably quite low, maybe less than 0.0001%
I want my phone to be greyscale (low-dopamine), but some apps need color. Here's my workaround that works for me (triple-pressing the side button didn't, I forget to turn greyscale back on.)
It's a colour filter that, well, makes the screen red.
It's AMAZING for reading at night. Not bright, renders text clearly, amazing on the eyes.
I'd also like to see an eInk phone take off, but this is more doable.
Reduce White Point is also great for reducing max brightness and preserving eye health
reply