Installing Tiles for Monochromacy on Andoid

monochromacy-android.md

[Update: After I wrote this, I found out that Google's Digital Wellbeing app has a built-in Grayscale feature. Ugh.]

Grayscale via Digital Wellbeing

1. Read about Digital Wellbeing: https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/09/06/digital-wellbeing-update-adds-grayscale-tile-app-drawer-icon/

2. Get it on the Play Store

Monochromacy via Tiles

Toggling colour / monochrome on an Android phone is a much bigger pain than it needs to be but once the instructions are all in one place, it's worth the five minutes it takes to complete.

1. Pay $1 and nstall Tiles

2. Open Tiles and scroll down to Monochromacy. Turn Tile visibility on. Edit Quick Settings and add the Monochromacy tile.

3. Try clicking Write secure settings permission. It will complain, saying the app doesn't have this authority and you need to grant it using Android Platform Tools.

4. Install Android Platform Tools. On a Mac:

brew cask install android-platform-tools

...for Linux and Windows, follow the instructions on the Tiles support wiki: https://github.com/TilesOrganization/support/wiki/How-to-use-ADB-to-grant-permissions

5. Plug your phone into your computer with a USB cable and use ADB to override the secure settings permission:

adb devices
# => this will poke your phone and your phone will ask you to give `USB Debugging` permission to your computer; allow this

adb shell pm grant com.rascarlo.quick.settings.tiles android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS
# => no news is good news; this command has no output if it worked correctly

adb shell dumpsys package com.rascarlo.quick.settings.tiles | grep WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS
# => you should see `android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS: granted=true`

6. Try clicking Write secure settings permission again. You'll get the same pop-up but it should toggle the setting this time.

7. Try your new Monochromacy quick setting!

update from 2021 - Google removed the grayscale function from Digital Wellbeing, thank for not taking this down!

Update from 2023: I can access the grayscale mode by enabling "Bedtime mode" from Digital Wellbeing. It includes a quick action tile to enable/disable "Bedtime mode" easily.

Thanks for this!