I've been experimenting with greyscale on my Android phone, it is nowhere near the comfort level of real E-Ink.

How did you do that?

On Samsung devices, there's is an option under the Accessibility menu. Then go to something like "Improve Display" (mine is in Hebrew, so that is a rough translation that might not be exact) and then "Customize Colours" (again, rough translation).

Additionally, I believe that there exists an additional method to enable greyscale in Developer Options if you have that enabled.

Yeah I don’t disagree. But on the whole I think it gets you a long way towards it without the cons of having two devices for example.

Alright, I just spent the entire day on greyscale yesterday to check.

I think that I suffered more eyestrain than usual, mostly because I could not tell icons and other UI elements apart. Yet I don't have this issue on the E-Ink device, interestingly, even though I use many of the same apps e.g. Telegram.

I would say that the difference is due to the reflective vs radiative screen, not the greyscale palette.

Maybe it's a mismatch in requirements. For me, I move it into greyscale to give my monkey brain less reason to want to play with it. The intention when it's enabled is that if I need to set a timer or jot down a note that I don't get sucked into the device. When I'm done in a deep work mode, I switch it back to normal screen.

So for me, the whole point is I won't be using it enough to notice eye strain or something like that. If I'm messaging or doing something the device is designed for, it's a benefit for me to be able to have it in full fidelity.

Could you share how you set that up? Sounds effective.

For me I use the accessibility shortcut, three presses of the side button pops up a menu so I can select color filters (grey scale) and reduce white point (80% is my default). I enable both when I am reading. It's really helped eye strain when I'm reading.

Most of it is just in focus modes settings: alerts, notifications and things like that.

For greyscale you use shortcuts. There’s an automation tab, you set up on a focus mode being enabled then “set color filters on” and then the opposite for that focus mode being disabled.

Good to know! Thanks for sharing.

This sounds pretty great, how do you achieve it?

Shortcuts, presumably

Nope. All features of focus modes alone, I think.

Just the greyscale needs a shortcut automation.

Oh I didn’t catch that part. It makes sense that wouldn’t be available by default as a focus option.

There are a few system options in focus states but not this. I’d like to see them expand it for more of these low distraction techniques.