I tried the "grayscale-only display" for kicks, and it sucks, primarily with Apps that are better off with different colors - Maps.
Besides that, I have been disabling Notifications for ages, and that is the one decision that I believe was one of the best decisions of my phone life. I wrote an article in 2014[1] that needs a serious update, but it still makes sense.
Make it a habit to turn off Notifications as soon as you install a new app unless they are critical, such as Medical or Kid/school-related.
My Home page has a minimal wallpaper that I did a few years back, and it stayed. I usually leave one row at the bottom for beta-testing and region-specific Apps I use while traveling.
Of course, none of the Social Media Apps are on my phone. I checked my screen time to include this comment, and I've 37 minutes Daily Average. So, on most usage, I should still likely be averaging less than an hour daily.
Try turning down the color saturation. For me ~ 25% of original saturation is sufficient for using UIs that use color information.
I had the same annoyance as you, switching back and forth wasn't pleasant, and I'd forget. I think part of the reason is that switching between 0% <-> 100% saturation doesn't give room to adapt. It feels like a bandwidth of information is missing. But, if the colorspace is barely noticeable, your brain will fill in the colors for you with the information it gets... and the high-saturation default color-set would start to appear abrading and unnatural.
Actually, my primary usage of my phone is photography. I'm assuming the saturation will have an impact on Photography as I won't be seeing the ideal colors.
You can make the greyscale toggle on triple power/home button, or via control centre. Thus, you can have it on most of the time, toggle it to look at a map, then toggle it back.
You can also have a Shortcut that toggles the setting when you open and close specific apps.
I just did it and it’s very simple:
- in the Shortcuts app, go to Automations
- add a new one and pick “App” as the trigger
- choose the apps you want color in and pick “run immediately” and on open and close
- on the next screen pick “new blank automation”
- in the new shortcut add “Set Color Filters” and set to toggle
You can also make different automations for open and close, but toggle works as long as you toggle the effects manually. But in this case you can just toggle it back manually.
You could set up an "on app launch" automation shortcut for Maps to alter the Color Filter setting, but I'm not sure how you'd automate switching it back after closing/leaving Maps. I don't use the automations, but instead have a shortcuts widget with "toggle greyscreen" (among others) which is sufficient for me most of the time.
You can have 2 automation, one which enable grayscale when certain apps are open and one that disable it when the apps are closed. It’s under shortcuts > automation > app > is closed.
I put this in a different comment but you can also have a single automation that toggles the setting for those apps on open and close. This way you have a single list of apps to maintain.
Probably a bug but my browser in dark mode actually inverts image and video into something like posterized predator vision. Since I was looking for grayscale anyway, I’ve kept it and not looked back.
Even though phone manufacturers and service providers are doing everything they can to limit the availability of smaller, reasonably sized phones.. even the huge phone I get forced into using is just incredibly frustrating to browse the web with. Besides the usual gdpr harassment taking up a third of every screen, mobile just increases the thirsty demands for me to install apps, etc.
Might as well drive home the point that friction is inevitable rather than making it easier to start an interaction that’s only going to annoy me. If I need to do anything other than view simple text, I already know I’ll have to get out the laptop
Besides that, I have been disabling Notifications for ages, and that is the one decision that I believe was one of the best decisions of my phone life. I wrote an article in 2014[1] that needs a serious update, but it still makes sense.
Make it a habit to turn off Notifications as soon as you install a new app unless they are critical, such as Medical or Kid/school-related.
My Home page has a minimal wallpaper that I did a few years back, and it stayed. I usually leave one row at the bottom for beta-testing and region-specific Apps I use while traveling.
Of course, none of the Social Media Apps are on my phone. I checked my screen time to include this comment, and I've 37 minutes Daily Average. So, on most usage, I should still likely be averaging less than an hour daily.
1. https://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activi...