Android 15 wants to make Material You a bit easier on the eyes

Summary

• Android 15 may offer color contrast settings to make Material You colors easier on your eyes.
• Users can manually adjust text appearance with light, medium, and high contrast levels.
• A preview feature allows users to see how different contrast levels will look before choosing one.

Since Android 12, your phone can dress up in colors that match your wallpaper, giving a fresh look to Android, Google apps, and even some third-party ones. It even makes sure things are easy to read with good contrast. However, as eyes age, more contrast becomes necessary for productivity. To that end, Google might be adding a feature to Android 15 that makes those Material You colors easier on your eyes.

According to Android expert Mishaal Rahman (writing for Android Headlines), the Android 14 QPR3 Beta 2.1 version includes a hidden “color contrast” page. This feature enables users to adjust how text appears on their screens. With this option, users can manually darken certain parts of Material You, diverging from the default appearance that often uses similar color shades across various UI elements.

The default setting will be the lightest, but there are options for “medium” and “high” contrast levels if you want things to stand out more. There’s also a cool trick to make text extra readable: you can turn on a setting that adds a black or white outline around the letters. This works in both light and dark modes, making text darker on light backgrounds and lighter on dark ones.

There’s even a handy preview to show you how the different contrast levels will look before you pick one. However, the settings page cautions that not all apps may support every color and text contrast setting.

This feature isn’t entirely new. It seems Google has been tinkering with similar settings way back in earlier versions of Android 14. Those settings were a bit hidden for developers only, but this new menu appears to be a more user-friendly way to access that option.

This page might be included in this year’s Android 15 update

If you’re tech-savvy, you might be able to find these new settings hidden away in the code of the latest Android 14 beta. But for most folks, they won’t see it until the official Android 15 update later this year. Rahman notes that when it officially launches, it will be located under Settings > Accessibility > Color and motion.

The cool thing about these new contrast settings is that they work hand-in-hand with Material You. If an app uses Material You for its colors, it’ll automatically adjust to the higher contrast you choose, making things easier to read.