Visual assistance

Adjust colours if you are colour blind

Colour correction is an experimental feature and might not work correctly everywhere on your phone.

Turn the feature on

  1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Colour and motion.
  2. Tap Colour correction and turn Use colour correction on .

  3. To replace all screen colours with grey tones, choose Greyscale. Or, correct colours based on your vision:

    How you see coloursOption to choose
    It's difficult to tell violet from blue. Yellow and green appear redder.Red-green (Green weak, deuteranomaly)
    Colours aren't bright. Red, orange and yellow appear greener.Red-green (Red weak, protanomaly)
    It's difficult to tell yellow and red from pink. Blue appears greener.Blue-yellow (Tritanomaly)

If colours don't appear as you expect, troubleshoot the issue.

Add a shortcut

To use an accessibility shortcut for quickly turning Colour correction on/off:

  1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Colour and motion > Colour correction.
  2. Turn Colour correction shortcut on .

  3. Tap Colour correction shortcut and choose one or more shortcuts:

    • For a shortcut on your Home screen, select Tap accessibility button.
    • To press and hold both volume buttons simultaneously, select Hold volume keys.

Use colour inversion

Colour inversion flips all colours on your screen, turning light screens dark and dark screens light. This affects everything on screen, including media and images. While it can make reading text easier (light text on a dark background), it can also make it harder to understand images and videos.

If you're using Dark theme to reduce eye strain when reading, you might encounter specific apps that don’t support it and still have a light background. Turn Colour inversion on to use those apps with a dark background. You can use quick settings or a shortcut to easily turn Colour inversion on and off.

Turn the feature on

  1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Colour and motion.
  2. Tap Colour inversion.

  3. Turn Use colour inversion on .

    is added to your quick settings so you can easily turn it off/on.

Add a shortcut

To use an accessibility shortcut as an alternative to the quick setting:

  1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Colour and motion > Colour inversion.
  2. Turn Colour inversion shortcut on .

  3. Tap Colour inversion shortcut and choose one or more shortcuts:

    • For a shortcut on your Home screen, select Tap accessibility button.
    • To press and hold both volume buttons simultaneously, select Hold volume keys.

Use it

Open quick settings and tap to turn it on/off.

Or, if you set up accessibility shortcuts, tap or press and hold both volume buttons.

Make screen extra dim

If the brightness slider in quick settings doesn't go low enough, you can set the screen to extra dim.

Set it up

  1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Extra dim.

  2. Turn Make screen extra dim on .

    The first time you do this, Extra dim is added to quick settings.

  3. Use the Intensity slider to dim the screen.
  4. Optional: after you restart the phone, Extra dim will be turned off. To prevent this, turn on Keep on after device restarts .

Add a shortcut

To use an accessibility shortcut as an alternative to the quick setting:

  1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Extra dim.

  2. Tap Extra dim shortcut and select the shortcuts to use:

    • For a shortcut on your Home screen, select Tap accessibility button.
    • To press and hold both volume buttons simultaneously, select Hold volume keys.

Use it

Open quick settings and tap to turn it on/off. Touch & hold to adjust intensity and other settings.

Or, if you set up accessibility shortcuts, tap or press and hold both volume buttons.

Bold all text

To change all text on the screen to bold for easier reading:

  1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Display size and text.
  2. Turn Bold text on .

Magnify the screen

Turn the feature on

To set up the way to start (zoom in) and stop (zoom out) magnification:

  1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Magnification.

  2. Turn Magnification shortcut on .

    The shortcut is added to your screen.

  3. You can magnify the entire screen or you can use a magnifier that you can move around to zoom in on parts of the screen.

    To switch between methods, leave Magnification type set as Switch between full and partial screen.

    If you want to always magnify the entire screen, tap Magnification type and choose Magnify full screen.

    If you only want the magnifier box, tap Magnification type and choose Magnify part of screen.

Add a shortcut

To use gestures in addition to the shortcut:

  1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Magnification.

  2. Tap Magnification shortcut and:

    • To press and hold both volume buttons simultaneously, select Hold volume keys.

    • To quickly tap the screen three times, select Triple-tap screen.

      Turning this on might make your phone feel slower. After you turn on magnification, single taps take slightly longer. This short delay lets your phone find out if your tap is part of a triple tap.

Use magnification

  1. To start magnification, tap .

    You'll see an orange border around the screen.

  2. Tap the area of the screen to magnify, then:

    • Drag two or more fingers to scroll.
    • Pinch two or more fingers to adjust zoom.

  3. To change how magnification works, tap the screen to see , then:

    • To magnify part of the screen, tap to choose between a small , medium or large box.

      Then use to move the magnification area around the screen.

    • To magnify the whole screen, tap .

      If you don't see , change your settings to use Switch between full and partial screen for your Magnification type.

  4. To turn magnification off, tap .

    The orange border disappears.

You can't zoom in on the keyboard or the buttons.

Fix an issue

If you open or close an app when zoomed in, your phone automatically zooms out. To zoom in again, use . Or, go to Settings > Accessibility > Magnification and turn Keep on while switching apps off .

Use TalkBack to read screens

Hear descriptions of everything you touch.

Set it up

  1. Go to Settings > Accessibility.
  2. Tap TalkBack and turn Use TalkBack on .

  3. Tap Settings and set the options you want.

Add a shortcut

To add an accessibility shortcut for quickly turning TalkBack on/off:

  1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > TalkBack.
  2. Turn TalkBack shortcut on .

  3. Tap TalkBack shortcut and choose one or more shortcuts:

    • For a shortcut on your Home screen, select Tap accessibility button.
    • To press and hold both volume buttons simultaneously, select Hold volume keys.

When TalkBack is on

To hear descriptions:

  • Tap an item. Your phone speaks the name.
  • Start typing. Your phone speaks each number or letter.
  • Drag status bar down. Your phone speaks all of the notifications.
  • Open a message, file or book. Your phone reads the text out loud.

To change readout volume:

  • Press a Volume button to open volume settings, then use the slider to adjust the level.
  • Or, during voice readout, repeatedly press one of the Volume buttons.

Stop readout

If you added the shortcut, tap or press and hold both volume buttons.

Or, turn TalkBack off:

  1. go to Settings > Accessibility.
  2. Tap TalkBack and turn Use TalkBack off .

Hear audio description of films and shows

For films and shows that support it, you can hear a description of what's happening onscreen.

  1. Go to Settings > Accessibility.
  2. Turn Audio description on or off .