Published
For the last week or so, I’ve been experimenting with leaving my phone in black and white. The intent is to reduce the agressiveness of the attention-seeking interfaces on the phone and hopefully reduce my phone use. I’ve got a shortcut set up to let me easily turn colour back on (details below) if I’m, say, watching a video - without this I don’t think this would be feasible.
It’s amazing how after just one day, whenever I turn colour back on, I find it garish and unsettlingly bright. I’m not sure if it’s really lowering my phone use, though I do think it’s reducing my sensitivity to those notification bubbles. Mostly, I feel like my phone is yelling at me a bit less, which is definitely an improvement.
If you want to do this (and you have an iPhone), these are the steps:
- turn Settings->General->Accessibility->Display Accomodations->Colour Filters on and to Greyscale
- turn Settings->General->Accessibility->Accessibility Shortcut on and to Colour Filters (this means that if you triple click the home button, it’ll toggle colours on and off)