Does Grayscale Reduce Screen Time? What the Studies Found

Last night someone on r/nosurf wrote about a week with their iPhone in black and white. They had switched it on because "everyone says it kills the dopamine," and the notifications did look dull. Otherwise not much changed:

"Didn't stop my thumb. I'd unlock to check the time, and somehow I'd still land in Instagram." (r/nosurf)

That is close to what the research found. Grayscale does lower screen time, by 20 to 38 minutes a day in the three studies below. In the one study that also counted how often people unlocked their phones, that number stayed the same. So grayscale is worth turning on, and it works better next to something that adds a step before the app opens.

What the studies found

Three studies have switched people's phones to grayscale and measured what changed:

• College students, 8 to 10 days. Holte and Ferraro (The Social Science Journal, 2020) moved 73 of 161 students to grayscale. Their total screen time fell by about 38 minutes a day, mostly from social media and browsing. Time spent watching video didn't change.

• Young adults, one normal week and one gray week. Dekker and Baumgartner (Mobile Media & Communication, 2023) tracked 84 people's phones. Daily screen time dropped by 20 minutes, and people felt more in control of their phone use and less stressed. Sleep quality and productivity stayed the same.

• Medical students, one week each way. A trial published in Frontiers in Digital Health in July 2026 found 28 fewer minutes a day in grayscale among 51 first-year students, based on the screen time they reported. Sleep and productivity again showed no consistent difference.

All three were short, about a week of grayscale, so they can't tell us whether the effect lasts for months. The Dekker and Baumgartner paper also counted unlocks, and that part explains the Reddit post:

"daily screen time was significantly reduced by 20 min, yet the daily number of phone unlocks did not change, suggesting deep-rooted checking habits" (Dekker & Baumgartner, 2023)

Why you still open Instagram in grayscale

A gray feed is less pleasant to look at once you're in it, so people close it a little sooner. The moment before that stays the same: you pick up the phone to check the time, and your thumb goes to the spot where Instagram has always been, gray or not. One reply under the post put it this way:

"grayscale changes how it looks not how easy it is to grab." (r/nosurf)

The person who wrote the post found something that did slow them down. They put the phone in a drawer while they cooked dinner. On the first night they checked the drawer twice, on the second night once, and by Thursday they finished cooking without thinking about it. They kept grayscale on anyway, because when they do open something, "it looks slightly worse and I leave faster."

How to turn on grayscale on iPhone

1. Open Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Color Filters.

2. Turn on Color Filters and choose Grayscale.

To switch it on and off quickly, go to Settings → Accessibility → Accessibility Shortcut and select Color Filters. A triple-click of the side button then turns grayscale on or off, which is handy when you want to take a photo or look at pictures in color. Apple notes that color filters change how images and videos look.

Grayscale only in the apps you overuse

If a fully gray phone is too much, you can make only Instagram or TikTok gray and keep the camera, maps and photos in color. This takes two automations in the Shortcuts app:

1. Choose Grayscale once in Color Filters (the steps above), then turn Color Filters off again.

2. Open Shortcuts → Automation, tap + and choose App. Tap Choose, pick the apps you want in gray, keep Is Opened selected, choose Run Immediately and tap Next.

3. Tap Create New Shortcut, search for the Set Color Filters action, leave it set to turn color filters On, and tap Done.

4. Make a second automation for the same apps with Is Closed selected instead, and in its Set Color Filters action tap On to change it to Off.

After that the screen turns gray a second or two after you open one of those apps and goes back to color when you leave it.

Add a step before the app opens

Grayscale makes the visit shorter but doesn't stop you from starting it, so pair it with something that works earlier:

• Distance. A drawer during dinner, a charger in another room, or a wardrobe. Another person in the thread kept their phone in the wardrobe while studying for an exam, so they had to get up from the desk to reach it.

• A Time Allowance in Screen Time for the apps you open without deciding to. In iOS 27 these replaced App Limits and work for adults too. Here's what changed in iOS 27 Screen Time.

• FlyOut. Its shields block the apps you choose on a schedule, after a time limit or at a place, and its daily plan helps you decide what to do with the evening instead. To open a blocked app you go through FlyOut, say why you want it right now and take a short breath, which is the kind of step grayscale doesn't add.

Any of these can be switched off by the person who set them up. Someone on r/digitalminimalism said that "at 2am when the urge hits, you can undo all of it in about 10 seconds" (r/digitalminimalism). Most reaches happen at ordinary moments, like checking the time in the Reddit post, and a gray screen plus one extra step handles a lot of those. For the rest, there's a longer explanation in Is there an app blocker that can't be bypassed?

FAQ

Does grayscale help you sleep better? The studies so far found no effect on sleep: Dekker and Baumgartner and the 2026 Frontiers trial both saw no change in sleep quality. For the night, try a Screen Time Schedule or charge the phone outside the bedroom.

Does grayscale work for YouTube? Holte and Ferraro found that grayscale lowered time on social media and browsing but didn't change time spent on video. For YouTube, see how to quit YouTube without losing the useful parts.

How long does it take to work? In all three studies screen time was lower within the first week or so. None of them ran long enough to show whether the effect holds for months or fades as you get used to the gray screen.

FlyOut is available on the App Store: calm screen time for iPhone.