Now in Labs: High contrast themes

Making Monzo Monzo Labs
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Hello everyone :wave:

I’m Nuno, and I work in the Borrowing team at Monzo and I’m here to share an exciting new feature with our community!

:rainbow: :iphone: Introducing High Contrast Themes: Join Us in Testing!
We’re excited to share a new feature that aims to enhance the accessibility of our app: High Contrast Themes!

As part of our ongoing commitment to improving user experience, we have introduced high contrast themes for both light and dark modes, along with business banking themes. These new themes offer improved colour contrast, particularly between backgrounds, foregrounds, and separators.

You can access this new feature by going into our Labs section and activating the “High Contrast Mode” toggle. Afterwards you can enable or disable it in Settings :arrow_right: Theme .

Make sure you’re using the latest version of the app. You’ll need to use at least 5.33.0 Android and 5.36.0 iOS to see the feature.

Your feedback is invaluable to us as we work to create an app that caters to everyone’s needs.

Thank you for your help and participation! :blush: :pray: Let’s make our app more accessible and user-friendly than ever before! :star2: :calling:

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I know we can activate it and try ourselves but would be useful for this thread to have
side-by-side screenshots illustrating normal vs high contrast (instead of light vs dark)?

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I’ve grown to love it! Colours are so much more appealing.

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I know we can activate it and try ourselves but would be useful for this thread to have
side-by-side screenshots illustrating normal vs high contrast (instead of light vs dark)?

Hey, thank you for the feedback, that is a good point! Since the changes can be subtle, I’ll try to get a good example screen to showcase the difference :+1:

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As someone who is visually impaired I love this addition.
I will admit I struggle to see the changes for dark mode, but light mode is very clear :slightly_smiling_face::+1:

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I noticed this a day or so back and enabled it. It’s hard to say exactly what the differences are but I have noticed the app feel easier to use and more readable for me.

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I enabled this prior to today. It’s a subtle change, but I love it. I find the text easier to read

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It would be good if there were a preview image below this toggle so that you could instantly see the difference between off and on with a bit more content on the screen.

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I use dark mode exclusively as it’s better for my poor eyes, and the increased contrast, while only a subtle change, makes a huge difference to the readability.
Great work!!

As others have pointed out, a comparison of both light and dark mode, with and without the increased contract within the initial post would be super useful.
A comparison in-app would also be a nice touch.

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I’ll bring this feedback to our team and see if we can incorporate something more visual or a full preview :eyes:

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On

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Off

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On

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Off

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I don’t have any issues with the default, but it’s a much nicer experience in general with the clearer contrast so I turned it on and just left it like that. Definitely approving of it. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Fully on board with this. I also don’t have a specific need for higher contrast, but it’s generally a nicer viewing experience regardless and I hope this just becomes the default.

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Accessible by default is, in my opinion a better approach, hopefully once this has been fully tested it can be rolled out as the default option.

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I notice that the coloured banner at the top of payments can sometimes have very low contrast (1.37:1 low) .

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Seems just to be an issue in dark mode

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Sorry. This might not be the right place for this question, but I cannot find anywhere more suitable.

I unfortunately switched to the new layout a couple of weeks ago and it’s made using the app horrible, bordering unusable. The screen is cluttered with stuff I don’t use. The important money management is hidden away. It’s too many clicks to see all your transactions. Worst of all my budgets and spend against budget per month has completely disappeared.

How do I get back to the old layout please. I’m desperate for it. When I go to settings / Monzo labs I don’t see an option called ‘App Layout’ or ‘Overview’ or anything relevant In fact the only option switched on is ‘High Contrast Mode’.

Help!!!

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If you tap Trends, and then Target, you can set up your budgets there, though it looks a little different:

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You can also swipe down from the main screen and see a few other spending insights, called Spotlight, and if you scroll to the right of it you can edit what you see there:

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You can also edit the layout of Pots if you use them, and parts of the Home Screen with more adjustments coming soon.

But as mentioned above, this is monzo now.

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Hiya. Yes, I did see all that. However, I don’t want to set up a new budget.

I already had a budget and was tracking my monthly spend against it. Now I don’t know what that budget was or how I’m doing.

It’s outrageous that Monzo would simply delete this.

Do you know how I can revert to the previous UI? I’m hoping my budget will still be there if I can revert. There’s nothing I like about this new version so it will be no loss if I can revert to the previous version with my active budget management.

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Tap your card on the home screen.

You’ll be taken to the carousel view. In the top right there’s an icon for summary which I think is what you want to see.

You can take whatever you want from that and set it up in Targets.

The carousel and summary will all go away at some point so use the new replacements.

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