All the Ways You Can Make Reading on Your Phone Easier

Phone screens are better than they’ve ever been—bigger, sharper, and brighter—but they don’t always offer the best displays for extended reading sessions. If you’ve got a lot of text to get through, you might find yourself turning to a Kindle instead, or even a good old-fashioned physical book.

There are ways to tweak the screen configuration on your iPhone or Android phone, however, to make it more suitable for reading. These changes will reduce the chance of causing you eye strain while minimizing clutter to create a more pleasant reading experience. You won’t transform 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’ve actually got more control over the font sizes, styles, and colors used by your phone than you might have realized—you can make text easier to read and create a more Kindle-like experience with just a few taps via 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 size and text. The next screen lets you adjust the size of the default font and other on-screen elements to make text bolder, and there’s also a Dark theme option that you might find reduces eye strain.

Over on iOS, open up 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 via the theme selector at the top of the screen—select Dark to dim the colors all across the iOS interface.

Both Android and iOS also have a night reading mode that reduces the blue light emitted from your phone and makes the whole 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 pick Display & 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’re going to be doing on your phone will be through its web browser, and most modern mobile browsers come with a dedicated reading mode you can use. These modes will reduce onscreen clutter, simplify the color scheme, and bring the main article text to the fore.

If you’re using Google Chrome as your default browser on Android, tap the three dots (top right), then Show Reading mode to switch views 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 (just 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 will work in reading mode. Tap the icon then Show Reader to enable the mode, then tap the icon again (which turns into a page symbol) to configure the reading mode settings and go back to the normal view.

You don’t have to stick with the default option, as many third-party browsers offer a reading mode too. In the case of Firefox for Android or iOS, for example, you can 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 you’ve got is to install a dedicated read-it-later app for your phone, which will work a lot 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 a variety of devices, and catch up on your reading whenever you find the time.

To add articles to Instapaper, you can pick the share option in your mobile browser when you’re viewing an article, then pick 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, and you can add items to read from the desktop too.

Tap on 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 up in the top right corner to change the interface settings: There are options here for page color, font size, font style, and pagination.

Instapaper can be used free of charge, but it also offers a $3 per month premium subscription, which you might find useful. A paid account brings with it such extras as advanced article search, unlimited notes for your articles, and the possibility to have your saved articles read out to you.