Android phone update

 How to enable high-contrast mode on your Android phone

The average time a US citizen spends looking at their phone each day is more than five hours. It is almost half of our waking hours spent staring at a phone screen. But with our eyes constantly glued to a screen, there might be some concern about how much blue light exposure our eyes get. The same light is the culprit for causing damage to our eyesight and tricks our brains into staying awake (at night). However, most modern-day Android tablets and Android phones have methods to limit your exposure.

Outside of blue light emission concerns, other factors contribute to eye strain, such as viewing muted colours and low-contrast backgrounds displayed against on-screen text for long periods. If you are susceptible to photosensitivity or have naturally low vision, change your display settings to improve the contrast between colour and text. Android has come a long way since Android 13 included customizable accessibility features to make our viewing experience more comfortable. So, to teach everyone how to locate these handy display options, we will share a quick way to activate high-contrast mode on any Android phone.

How to turn on high-contrast mode on your Android phone

You can use high-contrast mode to improve the readability of your apps and documents. Not all apps support high-contrast mode and the feature is still experimental and continually being developed. But for some, you can activate high-contrast mode from your Android settings. 

How to activate high-contrast mode on Google Pixel

You can turn on high-contrast mode by tweaking your displayed text options. For Google Pixel 7 on Android 14, following steps are required:-

Open Settings on your device and tap Accessibility.

Under Accessibility, tap Display size and text. Alternatively, go to the Display settings to find Display size and text.

Tap the slider to toggle on High contrast text.

How to activate high-contrast mode on Samsung Galaxy

Thanks to Samsung's fancy One UI skin for Galaxy phones, it might not be as straightforward to turn on high-contrast mode. We  have modified the steps to include the differences for Samsung Galaxy S23 running One UI 5.1.

Navigate to Settings.

Scroll down and tap Accessibility.

Under Accessibility, select Visibility enhancements.

Under Display mode, tap High contrast, then select Apply.

Samsung has some extra options to optimize your display. You can customize your high-contrast mode to enhance the font colour and outline, keyboard letter display, highlight button text, colour inversion and modify your phone's theme. We recommend trying these options to get the best high-contrast experience to please your eyes.

Eye comfort shield feature on Samsung Galaxy S23

You can tweak another setting to help reduce blue light emissions. Samsung Galaxy S23 has a colour temperature change that is adjustable throughout the day. You can turn this on by visiting the Eye comfort shield option under the Display settings.

Buy a screen protector for your Android phone

There are screen protectors that do more than prevent physical damage to our phone screens. Some of these screen protectors have films with anti-glare and anti-reflective properties. To get the best for yourself, you may want to invest in extra screen protection for your favourite phones and tablets. For example, you can buy a screen protector for your Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. And if you don't own a top-of-the-line phone, there are plenty of screen protectors available for more budget-friendly phones, like the Google Pixel 7a.