Phone displays are better than they’ve ever been — bigger, sharper, and brighter — but they don’t always offer the ideal experience for long reading sessions. When you have a lot of text to get through, you might end up reaching for a Kindle or even a good old-fashioned physical book.
There are ways to tweak the display settings on your iPhone or Android phone to make it better for reading. These changes can reduce eye strain while minimizing clutter to create a more pleasant reading experience. You won’t turn your phone into something that rivals an e-reader or the printed page, but you can certainly get closer to it.
Tweak the Display Settings
You have more control over the font sizes, styles, and colors used by your phone than you might realize. You can make text easier to read and create a more Kindle-like experience with just a few taps through the main Settings panel.
On Android, the menu labels will vary from model to model, but on Pixel phones head to Display size and text. From there you can adjust the size of the default font and other on-screen elements, make text bolder, and there’s also a Dark theme option that can reduce eye strain.
Over on iOS, open Display & Brightness from Settings. Here you’ll find a Text Size slider you can adjust, as well as a Bold Text toggle switch. As on Android, there’s a dark mode option here through the theme selector at the top of the display — choose Dark to invert the colors throughout the iOS interface.
Both Android and iOS also have a night reading mode that reduces blue light emitted from your phone and makes the display warmer — which should make for a more pleasant reading experience. On Android Pixel phones, choose Display and touch > Night Light from Settings, and on iOS choose Display & Brightness > Night Shift. In both cases you can enable the feature manually or through a schedule.
Use Your Browser’s Reading Mode
Much of the reading you do on your phone will likely be through its web browser, and most modern mobile browsers come with a dedicated reading mode. These modes reduce onscreen clutter, simplify the color scheme, and bring the main article text to the forefront.
If you’re using Google Chrome as your default browser on Android, tap the three dots (top right), then Show Reading mode to change the view for the article you’re currently reading. Swipe up on the panel at the bottom of the screen to change the font and color options. Tap the reading mode icon (to the right of the address bar) to return to the normal browser view.
With Safari on iOS, look for the reading mode icon to the left of the address bar: it’s a small rectangle over two horizontal lines, and it appears when you’re viewing any article that works in reading mode. Tap the icon then Show Reader to enable the mode, then tap the icon again (which turns into a page icon) to configure reading mode settings and go back to the normal view.
You don’t have to stick with the default option either — many third-party browsers offer a reading mode too. In Firefox for Android or iOS, for example, tap the Reader View icon in the address bar for compatible pages — it looks like a printed page. If you see a lightning bolt icon instead (for article summaries), tap and hold on it to switch to Reader View.
Install a Dedicated Reading App
Another option is to install a dedicated read-it-later app on your phone, which works much like the reading mode in your mobile browser. The gold standard here is Instapaper for Android or iOS. You can import and sync articles from multiple devices and catch up on your reading whenever you have time.
To add articles to Instapaper, select the share option in your mobile browser when viewing an article, then choose Instapaper as the destination. You can also add links through the Instapaper mobile app itself by tapping the menu button (top left) then the + (plus) button. Instapaper is available on the web as well, so you can add items to read from your desktop too.
Tap any article in your Instapaper reading list in the app, and you get a beautifully clean and distraction-free reading experience. Tap the Aa icon in the top right corner to change interface settings: there are options for page color, font size, font style, and pagination.
Instapaper can be used for free, but it also offers a $3 per month premium subscription that may be worth it. A paid account brings extras like advanced article search, unlimited notes on your articles, and the ability to have your saved articles read out to you.
