With the exception of old movies, most of us are used to seeing our screens in color. However, grayscale – where you see nothing but black, white or shades of gray – can be useful, even when it comes to your smartphone.
To begin with, people who are severely color blind will find a screen that has been switched to grayscale much easier to work with (as otherwise, some colors may be difficult to distinguish). It might be a good thing for the rest of us, too, because shades of gray are said to be much easier on the eyes — so using it at night could rest your eyesight. (Plus, forcing all your videos to be shades of gray might finally convince you to put down the phone and get some sleep). If used during the day, you may be less tempted to pick up your phone instead of paying attention to your work or other parts of your life.
Here’s how to change the screens on your iPhone, Samsung Galaxy phone, and Google Pixel to grayscale. (If you have an Android phone from a different manufacturer, the instructions should be similar to those for the Pixel.)
Changing your screen to grayscale on iPhone is a very simple process. Currently, you can find it as a feature under Accessibility.
- Choose Settings > Accessibility > Screen and text size > Color filters
- Change Color filters and select Gray scale
There are also several ways you can turn grayscale on and off using your iPhone’s Shortcuts. First, if you want to enable it with a triple click on the side button (power):
- Set grayscale as your color filter as described above. (You don’t need to keep it on, just make sure it’s set as the color filter.)
- Return to Settings > Accessibility page and select Accessibility Shortcut.
- Press Color filters so it has a green checkmark.
To add a button to Control Center, first set up the accessibility shortcut as described above. Afterward:
- I’m going to you Settings > Control Center > Included Controls > Accessibility Shortcuts
- The button (the figure of a person inside a circle) will appear when you swipe down to access the Control Center. tap it and any options selected in the list of accessibility shortcuts will be available.
You can also create a grayscale shortcut that you can then activate at specific times, such as during sleep mode or when you’re in focus mode. To create the shortcut:
- open it Shortcuts application and tap on plus sign in the upper right corner.
- Puncture Add action
- Type Set color filters in the search box until it appears in the list and select it. You will be returned to the action page and see the action Turn on the color filters.
- If you want, you can change Turn to Change the Ask every timeand you can change On to Away from.
- Puncture Done.
If you want to automatically enable grayscale at night or associate it with a focus mode during business hours, then you can do that via the Shortcuts app as well. For example, let’s say you want to create a shortcut that will activate in grayscale at night when you’re supposed to be sleeping:
- open it Shortcuts application and tap it Automation icon at the bottom of the screen
- Puncture Creating Personal Automation
- Puncture Sleep > Bedtime begins (or, if you prefer, Wind Down begins) and select Next
- Choose Add action
- Type Set color filters in the search box until it appears in the list and select it, then select Next
- The next screen will show that your new automation will start when bedtime starts and that it will set the color filters. You can switch Ask before the run enable or disable. When you are satisfied, choose Done.
You can use the Shortcuts app to set all kinds of automations or other ways to turn grayscale (or other conditions) on or off. Go ahead and experiment.
If you’re using a Pixel phone or other Android phone, you can have two different ways you can adjust the screen to go grayscale, depending on what you want to use it for.
If you want to switch to grayscale at night to relax your eyes (or discourage yourself from using your phone), you can use Android’s bedtime feature to automatically set your phone to grayscale gray at a certain time. (If you haven’t set up Bedtime yet, here are some instructions.)
- I’m going to you Settings > Digital Wellness & Parental Controls > Bedtime Mode
- Scroll down and select Personalization > Bedtime screen options
- Change Gray scale on
What if you want the screen to be grayscale all the time — or if you want to be able to turn it on and off whenever you want? This is also possible using the color correction feature in the Android Accessibility Toolkit.
- I’m going to you Settings > Accessibility > Color and motion
- Choose Color correctionscroll down and select Gray scale.
- Go back to Use color correction button and turn it on.
If you want to switch to grayscale whenever you want, but don’t want to keep track of all those menu options every time, you can make it easier by using the Quick Settings menu or by adding a little “accessibility button” that will float around all the time. your screen. In any case, note that grayscale is not the only type of color correction available, so before setting any of these options, you must go to Color correction menu as described above and select Gray scale.
To add color correction in the Quick Settings menu:
- Swipe down twice from the top of your screen to bring it up Quick settings menu
- Press it small edit icon bottom right in the menu (looks like a pencil)
- Find it Color correction place and hold it and drag it up to add it to your active tiles
To create an accessibility button:
- Follow the instructions above to Color correction page
- Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and switch to Color correction shortcut
(Interestingly, I found that when I created the accessibility button, my Pixel 6 automatically added Color Correction to my Quick Settings menu.)
Similar to the Pixel, the Samsung has a sleep mode. However, Samsung’s operation automatically switches to grayscale mode (instead of giving you other options).
- I’m going to you Settings > Features & Routines > Sleep
- In the Sleep page, toggle Turn on automatically (and set your schedule if you haven’t already).
Samsung also has a way to enable grayscale using its accessibility tools.
- I’m going to you Settings > Accessibility > Visibility Improvements
- Choose Color correction and press Gray scale.
- Enable the color adjustment at the top of the page.
- You can also create a shortcut similar to this on a Pixel.
You can also turn grayscale on and off using it Color correction tile on your Samsung Quick settings menu. As with other Android phones, you should first set the color setting to grayscale under Accessibility.
- Swipe down twice from the top of your screen to bring it up Quick settings menu
- Press it add button at the bottom of the menu
- Find it Color correction tile and hold and drag it to your active tiles