It was doing exactly the same things, but it just felt far less engaging without the colorful icons and interfaces.

The first thing I noticed was that the phone felt less “fun” overall. Well it’s not great, but that’s kind of the point, right? I didn’t expect there to be much difference in my usage, but I have to admit I felt quite a bit different when looking at my phone after turning on this feature, and the difference was similar on Android and iOS. Note that these may be slightly different depending on the Android model you are using. She tried this simple solution to try and use her phone less, and I thought “what the hell, let’s try it.” Here’s how you do it on iOS and Android: iPhone or iPad Nellie Bowles got me thinking with this piece in the New York Times about setting your phone into grayscale in order to use it less.