How to Fix It When Your Phone Screen Turns Black and White

Your phone turning black and white may appear in one of several different ways.

• All icons lose color and appear in only black and white.
• The entire display and every app you open only appear in grayscale.
• The display still has some color, but it appears faded or a light shade of only one color.

Each of these behaviors is a symptom of some setting you might have inadvertently set without realizing it. Understanding which settings can cause this behavior will help you set things back to normal.

Cause of Phone Screen Turning Black and White

Your icons or entire phone screen may turn black and white for many reasons. Two of the most common causes are accessibility settings that alter screen or icon colors, as well as power-saving mode options.

However, other issues can change screen colors to black and white. These include hardware failures, faulty OS updates, or a faulty charger. To set your display colors back to normal, follow the steps below to reset these settings.

How to Fix When Your Phone Screen Turns Black and White

The following troubleshooting will start from the most straightforward fix for a black and white phone screen before moving to more advanced or complex solutions.

1. Shut down and restart your phone. Use the correct procedure to restart your Android phone or tablet. Many times, if it's a software malfunction with your OS or an app, a simple restart will resolve the issue with your screen turning black and white.

2. Check if you've recently installed any new apps, and then uninstall them. Deleting apps from your Android phone will often resolve the issue if it just started right after you've installed a new app. Don't forget to check for and remove any hidden apps on Android.

   You can verify that an app is causing the black and white screen issue by starting your Android in Safe Mode.

3. Try turning off battery-saving mode. Here's the procedure to disable battery-saving mode on Android. However, the side-effect of a black and white screen while running on low battery power with this turned on is standard on both systems. Disabling it may resolve the issue.

4. Disable Dark Mode on your phone. Dark mode on an Android reduces or eliminates the amount of blue light coming from the screen. This feature may make the display appear black and white or nearly black and white.

5. Check the Grayscale settings. Under Android Accessibility settings, you'll find the Grayscale setting under Screen colors under the Vision menu. If this is enabled, disable it to see if it fixes your screen color issue.

6. Double-check you haven't inverted colors. The inverted colors setting on Android is under the Quick Settings menu. Inverting colors may not make the screen appear black and white on all apps, but if you've accidentally enabled this feature, some screens can appear black and white or otherwise unusual to you.

7. If you've enabled developer mode on your Android, a Color Space option could switch your screen to black and white.

8. If none of the fixes above have worked, you may need to send your phone into the manufacturer or a local repair shop for servicing.

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