InstaDetox

How to make your phone grayscale on Android

Last updated: 4 October 2026

On almost every Android phone, grayscale works like this: open Settings, go to “Accessibility”, switch on “Color correction” and choose “Grayscale”. Samsung adds one extra step, “Vision enhancements”. Can't find it? Tap the search field in Settings and type “Color correction” or “Grayscale”. That route works most reliably, whatever your brand or Android version. Android always turns the entire screen grey, though. Turning only Instagram, TikTok and co. grey while everything else keeps its colour is what InstaDetox does for you, automatically.

Get it on Google Play Free download for Android 8.0 and newer

The fastest way on any Android phone

Every manufacturer arranges its settings a little differently. Searching inside Settings spares you the hunt through nested menus:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Tap the search field.
  3. Type “Color correction” and open the result. Nothing comes up? Try “Grayscale” instead.
  4. Switch Color correction on.
  5. Choose “Grayscale” as the mode.

Your screen turns grey straight away. Labels can vary slightly between manufacturers and Android versions, but search finds the setting regardless. Google also points out that Color correction isn't available on every device. If yours doesn't have it, take the route through Developer options.

Brand Path to grayscale
Samsung Galaxy Settings → “Accessibility” → “Vision enhancements” → “Color correction”
Google Pixel Settings → “Accessibility” → “Color and motion” → “Color correction”
Motorola Settings → “Accessibility” → “Color and motion” → “Color correction”
Xiaomi, Redmi, POCO Search in Settings: “Color correction”
OnePlus, OPPO, realme Search in Settings: “Color correction”
No Color correction Developer options → “Simulate color space” → “Monochromacy”

Samsung Galaxy (One UI)

Samsung tucks Color correction away in a submenu of its own. Here's how it works on current Galaxy models running One UI 6 to 8:

  1. Open “Settings”.
  2. Tap “Accessibility”.
  3. Tap “Vision enhancements”.
  4. Tap “Color correction”.
  5. Turn the switch on.
  6. Select “Grayscale”.

For the evening, Samsung has its own route through Sleep mode, see grayscale on a schedule. And if you switch back and forth a lot, add Color correction as a button in your quick panel.

Google Pixel

On Pixel phones running Android 14 to 16, and on phones that run close to stock Android, the path goes through “Color and motion”:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Tap “Accessibility”.
  3. Tap “Color and motion”.
  4. Tap “Color correction”.
  5. Turn on “Use color correction”.
  6. Choose “Grayscale” as the mode.

On older Android versions, one of the steps in between may have a different name. Type “Color correction” into search and you land right on it.

Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO

On Xiaomi and its Redmi and POCO brands, search gets you there fastest:

  1. Open “Settings”.
  2. Type “Color correction” into search and open the result.
  3. Turn on “Use color correction” and select “Grayscale”.

Xiaomi's own help spells out the full menu path: “Settings”, “Additional settings”, “Accessibility”, “Vision”, “Color correction”, then turn on “Use color correction” and select “Grayscale”. Newer software versions can shuffle these menus around, and search finds the setting either way.

Motorola

Motorola uses almost exactly the same menu names as Google. On current moto models with Android 15 and 16:

  1. Open Settings and tap “Accessibility”.
  2. Tap “Color and motion”.
  3. Tap “Color correction”.
  4. Turn on “Use color correction”.
  5. Choose “Grayscale”.

For the evening, Motorola comes with Bedtime mode from Digital Wellbeing, which switches grayscale on to a schedule. You'll find out how further down.

OnePlus, OPPO and realme

On OnePlus, OPPO and realme, your best bet is search. OnePlus warns in its own manual that the interface can change after updates, so any fixed menu path goes out of date fast:

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Type “Color correction” into search, or “Grayscale”.
  3. Open the result, switch Color correction on and choose Grayscale.

Through Developer options, if Color correction is missing

If your phone has no Color correction, there's still a hidden route through Developer options. It's meant for app developers, but the grey looks exactly the same. The option is called “Monochromacy”, the technical term for seeing nothing but shades of grey.

  1. Open Settings and tap “About phone”.
  2. Tap “Build number” seven times until “You are now a developer!” appears.
  3. Go back to Settings and open “System”, then “Developer options”.
  4. Tap “Simulate color space”.
  5. Choose “Monochromacy”.

These labels come from stock Android as it runs on Pixel phones. Other manufacturers sometimes put Developer options somewhere else and word some items differently. Important: this setting overrides normal Color correction. While it's active, the Color correction switch does nothing. To turn it off, set “Simulate color space” back to “Disabled”.

One tap: set up a Quick Settings tile

If you switch grayscale on and off a lot, you don't want to dig through four menus every time. Add Color correction as a tile in Quick Settings:

  1. Swipe down from the top of the screen until Quick Settings are fully open.
  2. Tap “Edit”.
  3. Add the “Color correction” tile.

Set Grayscale as the mode once in Settings first. From then on, one tap on the tile turns Color correction on or off. On Samsung, open the edit menu of the quick panel and add Color correction the same way.

You can skip the swipe altogether with the shortcut. On Pixel and Motorola it sits right inside Color correction (Accessibility → “Color and motion” → “Color correction”). Turn on “Color correction shortcut” there. Then choose whether the “Accessibility button” or the “Volume keys” trigger grayscale.

Grayscale on a schedule, for example at night

You only meant to set your alarm in bed, and an hour later you're doomscrolling through news and Reels from people you've never met. A schedule puts a stop to that: Android switches grayscale on by itself at bedtime. The route depends on your brand and Android version.

Newer Pixels: through “Modes”

If you see “Modes” in Settings, here's how:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Tap “Modes”.
  3. Tap “Bedtime”. The first time round, set the mode up through “Set up Bedtime”.
  4. Open “Display settings” through “More settings”.
  5. Turn on “Grayscale”.

Grayscale then runs whenever Bedtime is active: on schedule, or by hand through the “Modes” tile in Quick Settings.

Motorola and older Pixels: through Digital Wellbeing

  1. Open Settings and tap “Digital Wellbeing & parental controls”.
  2. Tap “Bedtime mode”.
  3. Tap “Bedtime routine” and set your schedule.
  4. Tap “Customize”, then “Screen options at bedtime”.
  5. Turn on “Grayscale”.

Samsung: through Modes and Routines

  1. Open “Settings”, then “Modes and Routines”.
  2. Tap “Sleep”.
  3. Set when the mode starts, for example through “Sleep schedule”, and confirm with “Save”.
  4. Check under “Other actions” that Grayscale is included, and add it if it isn't.
  5. Tap “Turn on”, or wait for the schedule to start the mode.

How to turn grayscale off again

Turning it off works the same way, just in reverse:

Your screen is still grey

Then a second source is active. Android has three routes to grayscale that run independently of each other: Color correction, Bedtime mode and Developer options. Check them one by one. The same goes if your phone has suddenly turned black and white and every photo looks grey.

Using InstaDetox and the screen stays grey after you close an app? Tap the gear icon in the app, then “Troubleshooting” and “Reset grayscale filter”.

The catch: all or nothing

Grayscale works. In a randomised field experiment by Zimmermann & Sobolev (2023), Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, with 112 students, the grayscale group had 17.6% less screen time than the control group, around 50 minutes a day (DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2022.0027). The effect kicked in immediately and held steady. Before the study, participants rated grayscale the weakest of the three methods tested. By the end, it was the most effective. On three hours of screen time a day, 17.6% comes to around 32 minutes, every single day.

The problem is the setting itself. Android only does all or nothing here: once Color correction is on, the entire screen goes grey. Settings offers no way to pick individual apps. So your camera, photos, maps and banking app lose their colour too. You want to pick a photo for the family group chat or work out which train to take on the route map, so you switch grayscale off and forget to turn it back on. Next morning, Instagram is back in full colour. Switching by hand runs on willpower, and the switch is off again in seconds.

The same study shows how often it stays off in everyday life: participants had grayscale switched on only about half the time (46.5%). So the 17.6% came from a filter that was off half the time, which is why the authors call their result a conservative estimate. An evening schedule doesn't solve this, because during the day, on the train and in every queue, you're back in colour.

Grayscale for social media only: how InstaDetox does it

That's exactly why we built InstaDetox. You choose the apps that eat your time, such as Instagram, TikTok or YouTube. As soon as one of them is in the foreground, InstaDetox switches on Android's real grayscale. Leave the app and the colour comes straight back. Camera, photos, maps and banking stay in colour, and you never have to think about a switch again. The filter runs every time a chosen app is open, not just when you happen to remember. Nothing gets blocked: every app stays within reach, it simply loses its pull.

That hits precisely the apps where grey works hardest. In the study by Dekker & Baumgartner (2024), Mobile Media & Communication, with 84 Android users, grayscale cut overall screen time by 6.9%, and by 11.1% for visual apps such as social media, video and games (DOI: 10.1177/20501579231212062). Participants also felt more in control of their phone use and less stressed.

One thing grayscale didn't change in that study: how often people picked up their phones. Sessions got shorter, but the reach for the phone stayed. That's what the breathing pause in InstaDetox is for. Before a chosen app opens, you get a short moment to breathe and a question: open it, or cancel? This small hurdle, known in research as design friction, works like a firewall for your brain. A reflex becomes a conscious decision. In a field study with 280 people over six weeks, a short breathing exercise appeared before selected apps opened, with the option to cancel. 36% of all attempts to open them were abandoned, and in week six participants tried to open the apps 37% less often than in week one (Grüning, Riedel & Lorenz-Spreen (2023), PNAS; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2213114120).

InstaDetox uses exactly these two mechanisms: less pull through grey, fewer pickups through the breathing pause. You reach for your phone less often, and when you do, you're out again faster. Your screen time drops noticeably, and “Your stats” shows you every day how much time you've won back.

Give it a few weeks. Reaching for Instagram is an ingrained, unconscious habit in the way you use your phone, and unlearning it takes time. Lally et al. (2010), European Journal of Social Psychology, measured a median of 66 days until a new behaviour ran on autopilot, and missing a single day didn't seriously set progress back (DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.674). In the breathing exercise study, attempts to open the apps kept falling across all six weeks. If you still choose to open the app a lot in your first week, that's normal and no sign that it isn't working.

For Grayscale (system), InstaDetox needs a single setup, because Android protects this setting: from Android 11 it's guided right on your phone, and on Android 8 to 10 you do it once with a computer. It takes a few minutes and survives a restart. Our setup video walks you through every step. If you use Android's Color correction for something else, InstaDetox restores your setting as soon as the filter ends.

Grayscale (overlay) and “Your stats” are free for good. You can try Grayscale (system) and the breathing pause free for 14 days each, with no payment details. The 14 days only start once the feature is actually running on your phone. After that, the subscription costs EUR 4.99 for the first year and EUR 9.99 a year from the second year on, and the price shown on Google Play is the one that counts. All features at a glance: What InstaDetox does.

Get it on Google Play Free download for Android 8.0 and newer

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