This hidden iOS setting cured my cellphone habit

My display screen time is a tough tablet to swallow. Between working on-line all day, studying my Kindle at night time, and going by way of the motions of being a Zillennial simply making an attempt to coordinate film night time with my buddies, the hours I spend watching a display screen are sufficient to make any modern-day optometrist somewhat dizzy.

And that is not even accounting for the social media scrolling that strikes each time I am ready for software program to load. It is unconscious at this level — ready for a single e-mail to come back by way of immediately turns into six Instagram Reels earlier than I regain management of my consciousness once more.

Muscle reminiscence and dopamine spikes are the culprits, certain, but it surely’s not like I put too many limitations between me and the doomscroll. It is too simple to entry my social media apps, and I can not simply delete them — I am a social media supervisor, in any case. So relatively than imposing closing dates I’d simply ignore, I tweaked two tiny settings that tricked me out of my scrolling tendencies: app look and labels.

Radical app look modifications

As a result of the grayscale trick is not reasonable

Anybody I’ve ever identified who’s put their cellphone in grayscale mode has lasted a few week earlier than flooding their display screen with shade once more. Positive, it makes addictive apps much less interesting, but it surely additionally makes it borderline inconceivable to take (and have a look at) footage, watch movies, or do any form of on-line procuring. It is true that grayscale can reduce display screen time, but it surely does so by making your gadget depressing to make use of — and there is undoubtedly a greater manner to try this with out the distress issue.

iOS 18 launched the flexibility to mass-change your cellphone’s app look and create a cohesive, aesthetic dwelling display screen with colours of your alternative. Most individuals I do know opted for vivid electrical purples or serene sage greens — each screamed aesthetic — however vivid colours are nonetheless attention-grabbing. If my Instagram app is immediately turquoise, it is nonetheless going to catch my eye (and the subsequent half-hour of my time). Good begin, Apple.

However iOS 26 made the looks choices even higher with Liquid Glass, and at last tempted me sufficient to stray from the colourful defaults of my favourite apps. That is how I unintentionally found my anti-addiction repair: I used to be enjoying with totally different colours and transparencies for my apps once I realized I used to be late for an appointment. Within the panic that adopted, I did not have time to select the right shade and actually ran out the door with my dwelling display screen tinted a muddy gray-brown.

After a couple of hours, the colour had form of grown on me (it matched the autumn vibes) however I observed that my eyes weren’t getting snagged by the pinks, purples, and yellows of Instagram. I could not even discover TikTok’s well-known music-note icon. X vanished someplace within the chaos of my app hoard, and even Slack evaded my consideration for a couple of hours… sorry, boss.

The epiphany got here with somewhat frustration: I ended scrolling and began counting on the search bar as a substitute. However that motion alone made each app faucet an intentional transfer relatively than a unconscious reflex.

To alter your homescreen look, comply with these steps:

1. Click on and maintain clean area in your iPhone’s homescreen.
2. When the apps begin to jiggle, faucet Edit within the higher left-hand nook.
3. Choose Customise from the dropdown.
4. Choose Tinted, after which drag the sliders to decide on between colours and lightness.

I adopted this up with one other refined tweak, and it ended up being the cherry on prime.

Take away app names

An actual guessing recreation if you do not know all of your apps

To make discovering sure apps even tougher, I erased all of the labels from my dwelling display screen. To take action, comply with the identical steps as above and discover the top-right toggle exhibiting a small sq. subsequent to a bigger one. This allows you to select between smaller icons with names beneath, or greater icons with no labels in any respect.

Initially, I identical to the best way the larger icons look. However now, if I scroll to my third web page of apps (a lot of which I obtain for articles and barely contact afterward), I can not even inform what half of them are with out opening them. It creates yet one more impediment between my itch for a fast scroll and the app that might scratch it.

Different tweaks I discovered useful

There’s another choice on the alternative aspect of the icon-size toggle: gentle versus darkish. I do not imply the system-wide Gentle vs. Darkish Mode — that comes later. This one modifications the refined background tone of your private home display screen. Whereas the distinction is minor, the darker model is less complicated on the eyes and dampens any visible noise behind your apps.

Then, I went to the underside of the customization menu to decide on Auto as a substitute of Gentle or Darkish. I preferred the look of my tinted apps throughout the day, however the slight shift when the solar goes down offers my display screen an entire new aura and makes my social feeds even much less tempting. It is simpler on my eyes and retains me from getting too comfy with the format.

These refined variations are sufficient that I’ve observed I’m spending much less time doomscrolling and extra time writing in my Notes app — my favourite (and much more productive) pastime.