Greyscale on your mobile — what the black-and-white screen does, and doesn’t do

Greyscale on a mobile phone means that the screen displays everything in black, white and grey — and this can reduce how much you use it, as a large part of what makes apps appealing is colour. One of the few studies to have tested this directly found that students reduced their screen time when they switched to greyscale. But it removes a cue, not the habit, and most people switch it off again when it becomes uncomfortable. Here’s how to use it so that it sticks.

Colour is a signal, not a decoration

Look at your home screen. The icons have saturated colours, the notification badges are red, and feeds are full of images designed to stand out. This is no coincidence. Colour is one of the most powerful ways to attract attention, and red in particular is perceived as something that demands action.

Every colourful surface on your phone is therefore a small invitation. Greyscale removes the invitation without removing the app. It’s the same principle as putting the biscuit tin at the very top of the cupboard: you can still reach it, but it no longer calls out to you.

What the study actually showed

Holte and Ferraro asked a group of university students to switch their phones to greyscale and measured their screen time before and after. Screen time fell significantly.

It’s a promising result, but it’s worth being honest about how much weight it carries. It’s a single study, with a small group of participants, all in the same age group, over a short period. No one knows whether the effect lasts for months or what it would look like for a 45-year-old with different habits. There is no research showing that greyscale mode solves a problem with mobile phone use on its own. It makes the phone a bit less appealing, and that seems to be enough to reduce usage to some extent.

How to enable it

On an iPhone, greyscale can be found under Accessibility, in the Display & Text settings, as a colour filter. On Android, it’s usually found under Digital Wellbeing or in the accessibility menu, sometimes linked to a bedtime mode. The names vary between manufacturers and versions, so search for ‘greyscale’ or ‘colour filter’ in the settings.

Set up a shortcut if possible — on an iPhone, you can link the filter to a triple-press of the side button. This allows you to turn off greyscale for a few seconds when you really need colour, for example to view a map or a photo, and switch it back on straight away.

Why it switches off again

This is where most people slip up. Something requires colour – a photo you’re about to send, a map, an app where the colours mean something – and you switch the filter off. Then you forget to switch it back on. After a week, the phone is full of colour again and the habit has returned.

Two things help. The first is the shortcut mentioned above: make it just as easy to switch on as it is to switch off. The second is to link greyscale mode to a specific time rather than having it on all the time — for example, automatically from the evening onwards, when the risk of getting stuck in it is greatest. Anyone who scrolls in bed can combine this with the advice in the article on stopping scrolling in bed.

One tool among many

Greyscale belongs to the same family as app blockers and screen time limits: measures that make your phone less tempting or harder to use. They work best when combined with an understanding of why you pick up your phone in the first place — that’s the subject of the guide on how to stop scrolling. Without that, you won’t understand why you’re turning off the protection either — and most people do, sooner or later. The reasoning is set out in the article on why app blockers aren’t enough.

If you want to know whether it makes any difference to you, check your screen time in your phone’s settings for the week before and the week after. It’s the most honest test there is, and it takes two minutes. If you’re unsure what counts as ‘a lot’, there’s a guide in the article on how much screen time is too much.

One final point: greyscale mode doesn’t affect what you do in the app once you’re there. It might make you open your phone fewer times, but it won’t cut short an evening spent scrolling that’s already begun. That’s why it’s best used as a first line of defence, not as the only one.

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