A greyscale iPhone setup that works in everyday life
fabianhemmert.com51 points by hemmert 20 hours ago
51 points by hemmert 20 hours ago
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.
Tried turning on greyscale mode and I am surprised by how effectively it works in making me not want to use the phone.
Not sure if it's the lack of color in general or because screens kind of turn into a black and white mush that's hard to navigate.
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.
Why do you think Pokemon makes the cards super bright and shiny :)
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"
Apple does a pretty good job of extracting dopamine from black and white packaging.
Setting up triple click to toggle greyscale on or off in accessibility settings whenever I need color enabled works much better for me
What?! And miss out on setting up 72 automations for different apps that sometimes bug out?
I use perpetual night mode blue light filter, it just feels cozy enough
Grayscale was a functional problem because some pics communicate with color (like colored maps) so it nudged me away
Accessibility > Vibration > Off
Removes a lot of purposefully rewarding/manipulating haptics. Makes a phone feel "quiet" and easier to put down.
What apps were vibrating that much? I live in Do Not Disturb mode so I don’t have sounds for alerts.
Can remember how I set it up. Tap the back of my iphone 3 times and it toggles greyscale.
Makes taking and looking at photos nice.
Never knew that tapping the back of the phone did anything. Yet another Apple convention you only discover by accident?
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.
That's pretty nifty -- how to you register taps on back with automation?
Also, since I had an atari st as my first 'serious" computer, I loved the B&W monitor and b&W GEM.
I'm still looking for a way to preserve the low-color feel for my macbooks and mac desktops. Also I love the idea of low-dopamine UIs in principle.
For same reasons as the original author, I find myself to abandon the B&W mode and then do not turn it back on later.
I'd envision OS layer that handles the desktop, finder and apps, and an API that apps like browsers can use, e.g. in chrome extensions.
Anyone here aware of work in that area?
This is actually very neat, my phone is already setup with grayscale and triple tap to turn on red light filter so I’m exited to add that!
Little plug since we’re in the topic of dumb phones etc, I have a completely free and non-creepy iPhone app launcher for folks who are into that:
- https://sxp.studio/apps/applist
(The app catalog is also open source)
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.
I do this too but often forget to turn it back on when I need it off (e.g. for maps or for looking at a picture)
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.
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.
This is awesome, hope it helps me squash my YouTube addiction
Does running greyscale help with energy conservation?
This is great, would love to see a similar way to do it in Android.
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.
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
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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.)