Using greyscale

Back in 2023 I challenged myself to use my phone in greyscale mode for a week. The experiment was successful: a week later, I was still using my phone in greyscale mode. At some point afterwards, I did disable greyscale mode. But last year, or early this year (I can't remember exactly when) I turned greyscale mode on once again and have had it enabled ever since.

Part of my original motivation for changing my display mode to greyscale was that I thought greyscale would make my phone calmer. I think I achieved this goal, both through the change to use greyscale as well as through other decisions like not having email on my phone.

Now, I prefer my phone in greyscale mode – the greyscale mode is part of how I use my phone. Whenever I turn on the colour, I feel a bit overwhelmed. (Of note, I don’t use my phone for many image-heavy tasks. I rarely watch videos on my phone; I prefer to use my desktop for this purpose. This may make greyscale easier for me.)

Because I have had my phone in greyscale for several months, I don’t think about the display mode unless I am looking at a photo that someone has sent me or that I know I want to see in full colour. Also, whenever someone comments on my phone being in greyscale, I realise that the mode is enabled – otherwise, I don’t think about it.

In addition to having greyscale enabled, I have an accessibility option set that lets me disable the mode with three presses of the power button (see instructions later in this post). Being able to switch between colour and greyscale with ease makes it much easier for me to manage the greyscale mode. I don’t have to go to the settings page every time I want to see a photo in colour.

One interesting part of using your phone in greyscale is you realise that some application features are dependent on colours. Read messages in one text messaging application don’t work for me because they are dependent exclusively on colour as an indicator. This is among the reasons why colour should not be the only way to perceive a piece of information. But these experiences are generally few and far between (at least to the extent I have consciously observed and can recall at the time of writing this post).

Instructions to toggle greyscale with the power button on iOS

First, you need to enable greyscale, which you can do by going to:

• Settings
• Accessibility
• Display & Text Size
• Colour Filters
• Greyscale

You can then enable the feature to toggle the colour filter on and off with three presses of the power button from:

• Settings
• Accessibility
• Accessibility Shortcut

And then choosing the “Colour Filters” option.

The instructions above were last updated on May 4th, 2026; iOS may change in the future so the instructions may be out of date if you are reading this a while after the post was published.