Android’s design has gone in heavily for translucency and background blur, and while the “frosted glass look” is very chic, it can make reading text more difficult. A new accessibility option, the Reduce blur effects setting, will help ensure that’s ironically not the case; it provides an easy way to sharpen on-screen text without sacrificing Android’s sleek look.
The toggle, which has surfaced in recent Android preview builds, turns off system-level background blurs so that labels, notifications, and quick settings remain crisp against whatever wallpaper or other on-screen content is visible behind them.
It’s a small change that has an outsize impact, especially for people who have difficulty with low contrast or glare.
What the New Setting Really Does to Android’s Blur
Reduce blur effects is under Settings > Accessibility > Color and motion. When enabled, the global blur pipeline of Android is disabled for the UI layers. You will see it right away in the Quick Settings shade, app drawer, notification panel, lock screen, or recent apps view. Text and icons now appear on more transparent backgrounds, allowing users to read text better throughout the system.
This end user-facing control effectively replaces the old developer switch in Developer Options that used to be called “Allow window-level blurs,” and which we have since removed starting with these preview builds. The function isn’t new, but it’s no longer a feature hidden behind developer menus — anyone can access and use it in just a few taps.
The toggle showed up in the 2509 Android Canary build and code references have been seen inside Android 16 QPR2 betas. As with any feature on a platform as highly fragmented as Android, timing of its spread may differ from device to device and software channel (e.g., beta or stable), but the fact that it’s in Accessibility indicates Google wants this to be more than a minor experiment.
Why Blur Makes It Hard To Read For Most Of Us
Translucent surfaces feel like a premium look because the UI integrates with wallpaper, yet blurring subtracts from the luminance contrast that makes text read well.
Accessibility standards including WCAG 2.2 call for a minimum contrast of at least 4.5:1 for body text to ensure readability in varying conditions and among people with various visual abilities. Compliance becomes complicated when blur and translucency reduce perceived contrast.
This isn’t a niche problem. The World Health Organization reports that 2.2 billion people around the world have near or distance vision impairment, and age-related presbyopia impacts a significant portion of adults older than 40. In its annual “Million” report, WebAIM continues to identify low-contrast text as one of the most rampant accessibility failures on the web — a sign that legibility problems are not confined to mobile browsers.
Material Design’s new design language extends beyond the color selections and embraces translucency, depth, and dynamic color. In dark rooms, it can be stunning; outside in blazing sun, it can be punishing. The new toggle accounts for that context — and the fact that, well, your eyesight changes over the course of a day — and good design should bend where it needs to do so.
Real-World Gains You’ll Notice With Reduced Blur
With blur lowered, the lock screen clock and notifications pop more against busy wallpapers. Quick Settings tiles and labels are readable in front of a high-contrast or highly patterned background image. The recents screen steers clear of that “milky” haze that makes app names and actions come off as being fluffy.
And there may be side benefits as well. Blur is rather expensive, heavily optimized by the GPU, and turning it off will ease rendering workloads somewhat, taking away a bit of computational load that, in theory, could amount to a small efficiency or performance gain on midrange graphics hardware. The gain will not change battery life, but every millisecond that can be saved in composition is a good one.
How To Enable It And What You Need As A Developer
To give it a whirl: Open Settings, tap Accessibility, select Color and motion, and then toggle Reduce blur effects. That switch is global and instant. If an app relies on Android’s system-standard blur APIs, its panels and sheets will honor the setting. Custom, pre-blurred assets or images won’t change automatically, so there might be a few apps where backgrounds still appear fuzzy.
That could be a boon to developers who interpret this as an accessibility signal. Apps using RenderEffect blur, background dimming, or translucent sheets should ensure that text and controls are still readable with blur removed. Material Design guidelines recommend that fallback surfaces have solid or semi-opaque scrims to guarantee contrast reaches WCAG standards. Also, you should test with Display size and font scaling, Color correction, and Remove animations to cover common combinations of accessibility.
Part of a Larger Accessibility Toolkit on Android
Reduce blur effects ties in nicely with other Android features such as Font size and Display size sliders, Bold text, Remove animations, Color inversion, and Color correction. Unlike disabling animations or turning on High contrast text, this toggle keeps motion and design language while solving one (very problematic) readability issue.
The Bottom Line on Android’s Reduce Blur Option
That kind of practical fix is what accessibility advocates have long asked for — a familiar accessibility solution: simple, discoverable, respectful of user needs. It preserves expressive design for those who love it but returns control to people who just want text that’s easy to read at a glance — regardless of the wallpaper, lighting, or their ability to see.