I ignored this Android menu for years — now I use it every day to make my phone easier on my eyes

There's a section of your Android phone that you probably never visit because you probably think it's only for people that have vision or hearing problems. I'm talking about the Accessibility menu, which Google and Android manufacturers have been quietly adding new features to over the years that you should consider using. As for reducing eyestrain, I'm a huge proponent of never using dark mode, but there's more you can do that can make your phone more useful.

Things like Extra Dim mode (which is perfect for middle-of-the-night phone checking), and Live Captions (which auto-detects any speech and turns on captions) are huge quality-of-life improvements that are buried in the Accessibility settings and are great for all users, even if you don't have any issues with hearing or vision.

Make your screen extra dim

Like really, really dim

Whether you're trying to check your phone in a dark movie theater, or you don't want to disturb your partner in bed, it's a good idea to bump down your screen brightness so you don't disturb those around you.

But the minimum brightness on phones only goes down to around 2 nits with the manual brightness control, which is still too bright if you're in a pitch black room—using Extra Dim cuts the brightness down to just 0.5 to 0.6 nits. That's very dim!

This Extra Dim feature is mostly a Samsung thing, but you can still get very low screen brightness on the Pixel by manually adjusting the brightness slider all the way to the left. Once you move the brightness slider to the extreme left (you can access your brightness slider by opening the notification tray with two swipes), the Pixel will trigger minimum brightness mode.

Using Extra Dim cuts the brightness down to just 0.5 to 0.6 nits.

On a Samsung phone, the easiest thing to do is to add a new quick tile to your notification shade for Extra Dim. To do this: swipe down twice to open notifications > tap the pencil > edit > find Extra Dim and add it to your list of toggles. If you want another way to get to Extra Dim on your Galaxy, go to Settings > Accessibility > Vision Enhancements > Extra Dim.

Turn on Live Captions system-wide

Perfect for when you have to keep your sound off

There are so many times when I have to keep the sound turned off on my phone, but I still want to know what a person is saying while watching a video or listening to a podcast. I also receive a lot of voice messages on Telegram, and I don't need everyone around me to hear what the other person is saying.

With Live Captions, your Android phone will transcribe voices in real-time from any app with a text overlay caption on your device.

Add Live Captions to your notification shade

While you can turn on Live Captions through the accessibility menu (Settings > Accessibility > Live Captions (if you have a Galaxy, it's under Hearing Enhancement), the best thing to do is to add a quick tile for it to your notification shade so you can turn it on only when you need it. To do that, just swipe down twice on your notification shade > pencil icon > add Live Caption. Again, Live Caption auto-detects speech in any app, and turns the speech into a text overlay which is extremely helpful when you have to keep your volume off.

This is also great for people that speak different languages. Turning on Live Caption will translate speech from another language into the default language of your phone, though it only supports English, French, German, Italian, Japenese and Spanish.

Make your screen easier to see

Even if you have good eyesight

I stare at pixels all day, and I'm getting older, so I appreciate a little bit of help in making my phone easier to see which leads to less eye strain. Samsung devices have a particularly useful suite of vision enhancements that you can get to through Settings > Accessibility > Vision enhancement.

One of my favorite tools is the Enlarge Display toggle at the top, which simultaneously makes text bolder, especially in section headers, but also makes fonts a bit larger (but not "grandma large"). This makes a big difference in the legibility of your phone.

One of my favorite tools is the Enlarge Display toggle at the top, which simultaneously makes text bolder, but also makes fonts a bit larger. This makes a big difference in the legibility of your phone.

The equivalent of Enlarge Display on a Pixel is Bold Text, which you can enable by going to Settings > Accessibility > Display sizes & text > Bold text. This setting makes certain menus just a little bit easier to read with no downside to the overall UI of the phone.

Accessibility is not just for people with vision or hearing problems

They're for everyone

Whether you have problems with your vision or hearing, or you're just like me, and you're getting older and are trying to keep your eyes and ears as strong as possible for as long as possible, Android's accessibility tools truly offer a wide range of useful tools and utilities that makes using your phone easier.