Unless you’ve got a phone with an e-ink display, you won’t be able to get a one-to-one eReader experience on a phone. That said, with a few tweaks, you can get pretty close. The tricks shared below can be especially handy if you’ve got an old phone or tablet lying around that you’d like to turn into an Android-based eReader.
Now, before you start turning your phone into an eReader lite, you should get a solid eBook reading app. My vote goes to Moon+ Reader, which I had used for almost a decade before getting a Kindle. The level of customization it offers is impressive, allowing you to create the perfect theme for your eyes.
Install a matte screen protector
Reflections, begone!
First things first: get a matte screen protector, which will dramatically reduce reflections and turn your phone’s glossy display into a zero-glare screen, even in direct sunlight. You won’t notice the benefits when reading in the dark, but in brightly lit environments, a matte screen protector can go a long way into making your phone’s screen as close to an eReader as possible. As a bonus, matte screen protectors are also almost completely fingerprint-resistant.
Enable grayscale mode
See the world in black and white
Next, enable black-and-white mode on your phone. On Android, you can activate grayscale mode by opening Settings > Accessibility. From here on, things differ depending on which phone you have.
On Samsung phones, open Vision enhancements > Color correction. Once there, activate it and set it to Grayscale. Now you can add the Color Correction shortcut to the Quick Settings panel, allowing you to enable grayscale mode right from the home screen. On Google Pixel devices, open Accessibility, then go to Color and motion > Color correction, enable it, and set it to Grayscale.
Now, you might think that grayscale mode isn’t very effective before you activate it, but I couldn’t believe just how drastically it made reading at night easier. I now use it every single night (and sometimes during the day) when doomscrolling Reddit or reading articles in the browser. It’s a proper game-changer.
Use Eye Comfort Shield or Night Light
Even grayscale mode can cause eye strain without Night Light
You can make black-and-white mode even more effective by activating the Eye comfort shield (One UI) or Night Light (Google Pixel). These features limit blue light and make a noticeable difference even in black-and-white mode by tinting white and gray UI elements with amber tones.
The two options should be included in the Quick Settings panel, and you can open the menu to customize the intensity by tapping and holding the Eye Comfort Shield/Blue Light icons in Quick Settings.
If you can’t find them in Quick Settings, open Settings > Display > Eye comfort shield (Samsung phones) or Display & Touch > Night Light (Pixel phones). Personally, I set it to Custom and upped the slider to about 80% on my phone. Anything above that and the colors get too warm for my taste, but your mileage may vary.
Night Light, coupled with grayscale mode, is very effective at making reading on your phone more comfortable. The backlight will still cause some eye strain, but the intensity will be drastically reduced compared to reading text in regular, full-color mode without Night Light.
To reduce brightness even further, you can activate the Extra Dim option, which should be available on both Pixel and Samsung phones. To activate it, tap its icon in the Quick Settings panel (if it isn’t there, you should be able to add it). For adjustments, tap and hold the icon in Quick Settings or go to Settings > Accessibility > Vision enhancements > Extra dim (One UI). On Pixel phones, Extra Dim is activated when you pull the brightness slider all the way to the left.
Enable Dark mode wherever possible
Dark mode everywhere!
To maximize the effectiveness of grayscale mode, enable dark mode wherever you can. You can activate it system-wide on most Android phones by typing “Dark Mode” in Settings. On Google Pixel, you can also enable Expanded dark theme, which forces dark mode on apps that don’t support it, which works fine in most cases.
The good news is that most modern mobile apps support dark mode. Many even offer OLED-optimized themes that use pitch-black backgrounds, which completely turn off individual pixels and can even eke out a bit of extra battery life.
Use reading mode in Chrome and Firefox
Turn webpages into eBooks
Both Chrome and Firefox support reading mode, which turns the background black and simplifies the article layout, making the reading experience more like reading an eBook.
Reading mode should be enabled by default in Google Chrome on most webpages. Just look for its icon in the address bar. If you can’t find it, open the three-dot menu and tap “Show Reading mode.” You can customize it by pulling up the Reading mode sheet above the address bar.
In Firefox, you can tap the Reading mode icon located in the address bar, just like in Chrome. Note that in Firefox, you have to enable the dark theme for Reading mode to appear in dark mode. In Chrome, you can customize the Reading mode theme independently of the browser’s theme.
Install Xodo PDF reader to read PDFs in dark mode
A rare PDF reader with support for dark mode
Okay, so you installed and customized your favorite eBook reading app, switched to grayscale mode, and enabled the blue light filter, and now you can even read online articles in dark mode. But those pesky PDFs are still blindingly white. No worries, just install Xodo PDF reader, a rare PDF reader with support for dark mode.
To enable it, open the app, tap the three-dot menu, open View mode, and enable dark mode. Note that you can access a number of custom color modes by tapping the three-dot menu next to the Color Mode option.
Your phone is now an eReader, sort of
With these six tweaks applied, reading on your phone can come very close to the e-ink eReader experience. You won’t be able to get exactly the same experience because of the way LCD and OLED screens work, but you’ll get pretty close.
I can attest that eye strain when reading with these tweaks enabled is drastically lower compared to the vanilla experience, especially at night. Sure, my phone will never replace my Kindle, but it’s good enough that I can doomscroll Reddit or get lost in Substack for hours without my eyes feeling like they’ve been flashbanged.
