Does Making Your Phone Grayscale Actually Help? The Setting, and a 3-Day Test
Draining the color from your screen takes under a minute. Here is where the setting lives on iPhone and Android, how to put the switch one tap away, and how to find out whether it changes anything on your own phone.
“Turn your screen black and white and you’ll use your phone less” is advice you see everywhere. It costs under a minute to try, which is part of why it spreads.
This article covers three things: where the setting lives on iPhone and Android, how to put the switch back to color one tap away, and how to find out whether it does anything on your own phone within three days. Rearranging where apps sit is a different layer, covered in rebuilding your home screen.
What actually disappears
Only the color. The red badge count, the video thumbnail, the colored like button — the parts of the screen that were signalling “open me” get quieter.
Nothing is blocked. Notifications arrive the same way, and every app still opens. Removing color is the shallowest layer of friction you can add.
For context on friction in general, there is a measured example. In a six-week field study with 280 participants (PNAS, 2023), people closed the app in 36% of the moments where a short waiting screen appeared, and opening attempts in week 6 were 37% lower than in week 1. That study tested a delay before opening, not a color setting, so treat it as background rather than evidence about grayscale.
Why there are no effect numbers here
For the color change itself, we could not trace a primary source — one where the sample, the number of participants and the dates are all checkable — at the time of writing. So we are not printing a figure.
Use your own baseline instead. In a survey of 606 working adults in Japan by Job Research Institute (“2024 Survey on Smartphone Dependence”, conducted online 6–11 November 2024), the 450 respondents who said they used their phone too much reported a daily average of 264.7 minutes, about four and a half hours. On the gap between what people report and what their phone records, see self-reported versus measured screen time.
On iPhone (Apple calls it Grayscale)
- Go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size
- Tap Color Filters and turn Color Filters on
- Choose Grayscale from the list of filters
Apple’s guide notes that color filters can change the look of images and videos. If you also want bright colors toned down, Reduce White Point is on the same screen.
One detail worth knowing: Night Shift automatically removes inverted colors and color filter effects as the evening warms your screen — except grayscale, which stays on. The two settings coexist fine.
On Android (Google calls it grayscale too)
- Open the Settings app and tap Accessibility > Color and motion > Color correction
- Turn Use color correction on
- Pick grayscale as the correction mode
Google’s help page notes this feature isn’t available on all devices. If you can’t find it, there is a night-only route instead: Bedtime mode’s screen options include grayscale, which is covered in using Digital Wellbeing to draw a line.
Put the way back one tap away
This is the step that decides whether the experiment survives the week. Picking a photo, reading a colored map route, checking the color of something you’re buying — moments when you need color will come, and if getting it back means three taps deep in Settings, you will just abandon the whole thing.
| Phone | Where to set it up | How you switch back |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone | Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut, select Color Filters | Triple-click the side button (Home button on iPhone SE) |
| Android | Settings > Accessibility, pick the feature, choose a shortcut, tap Save | Tap the accessibility button, or touch and hold both volume keys |
On iPhone, if the shortcut has only one feature selected, the triple-click toggles it immediately with no menu. On Android, the Quick Settings shortcut is another option in the same list.
The three-day test
- Write down today’s total and your top three apps (Screen Time on iPhone, Digital Wellbeing on Android)
- Switch the screen to grayscale, and set up the shortcut back in the same sitting
- Change nothing else for three days — same notifications, same home screen
- On day four, open the same screen and compare the total and the top three
- Don’t mix weekdays with weekends; use three of one or the other
Stacking other changes on top makes the result unreadable. Three days of color-only is the whole point. And the total isn’t the only verdict: if the same total now hides a different top three, or shorter visits, that’s a reason to keep it. For measuring the length of a single session, see shortening the session after you open the app.
If nothing moves
If three days pass with no change, that app wasn’t being opened because of its color — your thumb knows where it lives. Put the color back and move to the next layer.
- Change the layout: rebuild your home screen
- Cut the interruptions: audit your notifications
- Draw a time boundary: set per-app time limits on iPhone
For the order to work through those, see seven ways to cut back on phone use. Grayscale is free and reversible in seconds. If it doesn’t suit you, switch it back and move on.
Sources
- Apple, “Change display colors on iPhone to make it easier to see what’s onscreen” (iPhone User Guide, iOS 27): https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/change-display-colors-iph3e2e1fb0/ios
- Apple, “Quickly turn accessibility features on or off on iPhone” (iPhone User Guide, iOS 27): https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/quickly-turn-accessibility-features-on-or-off-iph3e2e31a5/ios
- Google, “Change text and display settings” (Android Accessibility Help): https://support.google.com/accessibility/android/answer/11183305?hl=en
- Google, “Use accessibility shortcuts” (Android Accessibility Help): https://support.google.com/accessibility/android/answer/7650693?hl=en
- Job Research Institute (Persol Career), “2024 Survey on Smartphone Dependence” — 606 working adults in Japan, aged 20–59, surveyed online 6–11 November 2024. The 264.7-minute daily average is among the 450 respondents who reported using their phone too much: https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000227.000013597.html
- Grüning, D. J., Riedel, F., & Lorenz-Spreen, P. (2023). Directing smartphone use through the self-nudge app one sec. PNAS, 120(8): e2213114120 — a six-week field study with 280 participants; the app was closed in 36% of intervention moments, and week-6 opening attempts were 37% lower than week 1: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213114120
This article summarises published survey and research findings. It is not medical diagnosis or advice.
FAQ
- Does switching your phone to grayscale reduce screen time?
- We could not find a primary source with verifiable numbers on the effect of removing color itself. Notifications and app content stay exactly the same, so whether it helps depends on you and your phone. Since the setting takes seconds to undo, the practical move is a three-day test on your own device.
- Where is the grayscale setting on iPhone?
- Go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Color Filters, turn Color Filters on, then choose Grayscale. Apple's guide notes that color filters can change the look of images and videos.
- How do I switch the color back quickly?
- On iPhone, go to Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut and select Color Filters; a triple-click of the side button (or the Home button on iPhone SE) then toggles it. On Android, each feature has its own shortcut setting, where you can assign the accessibility button or a long press of both volume keys.
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