Phone screens are Better than ever (bigger, sharper, brighter), but they don’t always offer the best screens for long reading sessions. If you have a lot of text to read, you might turn to a Kindle or even a good old physical book.

However, there are ways to modify the screen settings of your iPhone or Android phone to make it more suitable for reading. These changes will reduce the chance of causing eye strain while minimizing clutter to create a more enjoyable reading experience. You won’t transform your phone into something that competes with an e-reader or a printed page, but you can certainly get close.

Modify display settings

You actually have more control over the font sizes, styles, and colors used by your phone than you might imagine: you can make text easier to read and create a more Kindle-like experience with just a few taps through the main Settings panel.

If you’re on Android, the menu labels will vary from model to model, but on Pixel phones head to Display and text size. The next screen allows you to adjust the default font size and other on-screen elements to make text bold, and there is also a dark theme option you can find reduces eye strain.

Adjust font size on Android.Courtesy of David Nield

On iOS, open Screen and brightness from Settings: Here you will find a Text size slider that you can adjust, as well as a Bold text toggle switch. Just like on Android, there’s a dark mode option here via the theme switcher at the top of the screen: select Dark to dim colors throughout the iOS interface.

Both Android and iOS also have a night reading mode that reduces the blue light emitted by your phone and warms up the entire screen, which should make the reading experience more pleasant. On Android Pixel phones, choose Screen & touch > Night light from Settings and in iOS select Display and brightness > Night shift. In both cases, you can enable the feature manually or via a schedule.

Use your browser’s reading mode

Much of the reading you’ll do on your phone will be done through its web browser, and most modern mobile browsers come with a dedicated reading mode that you can use. These modes will reduce on-screen clutter, simplify color schemes, and highlight the main article text.

If you use Google Chrome as your default browser on Android, tap the three dots (top right) and then Show reading mode to change views of the article you are 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 (just to the right of the address bar) to return to the normal browser view.