My experience running my phone in greyscale for the past several weeks

IsildursBane
2025-05-12T17:09:15Z

So for the past several weeks, I have been running my phone almost exclusively in greyscale. This is a tactic that is normally recommended for reducing phone usage, and can be easily done in iOS and Android through accessibility settings. The primary argument is without the colours to grab your attention, the phone looks less enticing.

My experience has been mostly positive, with a few drawbacks. Overall, it has made me use my phone less, although it is not the only change I have done.

Benefits:

I do find my phone less distracting. It is less appealing.

Text based content still works great.

Images are normally readable, although sometimes I miss subtlety in images.

If needed I can toggle it off, but I rarely do so.

Drawbacks:

It took me several days to adjust, and it was a hard adjustment period.

Some apps use colour for organization. The biggest offender in my use case for this is Three Cheers for Tildes. Overall the app is great, but new comments being denoted by an orange line is not readable for me. However, this just at times leads me to wait until I am at a desktop to look at the thread. I do think both on website and in apps Tildes should look at putting new comments with a dotted line, to not rely only on colour for accessibility reasons.

Surprises:

The biggest surprise for me is how unappealing my phone is in colour, since the use of colour everywhere is jarring. Most people do not realize how bright and colourful even phone menus are, until they run greyscale for an extended period of time. It has become more obvious to me how much app developers (and even OS developers) are using colour to grab our attention and suck us in.

Comments URL: https://tildes.net/~health.mental/1nyf/my_experience_running_my_phone_in_greyscale_for_the_past_several_weeks

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