Learn - Accessibility

Settings that affect readability and display.

Accessibility

This page covers the settings that change how text and dates are displayed in Essential Budget: text size, light or dark mode, date format, and timezone. All four live in Settings, reachable from the Settings entry in the hamburger menu.

These settings are free. None of them require Premium.

All four settings apply across every budget you open. A theme is the one visual choice that is set per budget separately, on the budget itself. Of the four settings here, only your timezone is shared with every device you sign in on; text size, light or dark mode, and date format are saved per device, since the right value depends on the screen.

The Accessibility section is hidden on small phones (screens 480 pixels wide or narrower), because text scaled to 200% on a phone-sized screen wraps awkwardly and pushes table rows and chart legends off the visible area. On a phone, the system-wide accessibility text size in iOS or Android still affects most of the in-app text.

Why is this device-only instead of synced? Because the right size depends on the screen. A 200% setting that reads well on a 27-inch monitor is unusable on a 10-inch tablet. Saving per device lets each one stay at the size it should.

Light mode and dark mode

Settings, Theme Variant section. A single toggle switches between Light Mode and Dark Mode. The toggle title shows the active mode.

Each theme has both a light and a dark variant; the toggle picks which variant the app uses. The colors of the active theme change, but the theme itself does not. Category colors, account colors, and the palette behind the charts stay consistent between modes.

Like text size, the mode you pick is saved per device. The default is light, and the choice is remembered for the next time you open the app on the same device.

Why no “follow the system” option? Because it is a small surface, and a binary toggle is easier to scan than a three-way picker. If you want the app to match your system theme, set this toggle once when the system changes; the choice stays.

Picking a higher-contrast theme

If the colors of the default theme feel low-contrast, switching themes is the more direct fix than tweaking individual settings. Themes ship with both light and dark variants; some have stronger contrast than others.

Open the hamburger menu and tap Themes. The page has two segments: My Themes (your saved themes) and Community (themes published by other users). Browse the Community segment, sort by what helps you compare, and apply any theme that looks easier to read. The change takes effect on the open budget.

For the full picker mechanics, see Themes and Icons.

Why no separate high-contrast toggle? Because contrast is built into the theme. Every theme picks every color you see in the app, so swapping the theme is what changes contrast directly and consistently, including chart palettes and category colors. A toggle on top of the theme would have to override colors the theme’s author had already chosen, which would erase those choices on every screen.

Date format

Settings, Date Format section. Three options:

Short (1/15/25): compact, all-numeric.
Medium (Jan 15, 2025): abbreviated month name.
Long (January 15, 2025): full month name.

The example in parentheses next to each option shows what the format looks like on a device set to the United States locale. On a device set to a different locale, the same option renders with that locale’s conventions: a device set to the United Kingdom shows the day before the month, for example. The format you pick controls how detailed each date is, not the order of the day, month, and year.

The chosen format is applied to dates throughout the app: the planner, history, account ledgers, exports, and dialog labels. Like text size and light or dark mode, the format you pick is saved per device, so a phone set to short can sit alongside a tablet set to long.

Timezone

Settings, Timezone section. The first time you open Settings, the app detects the timezone from your device and saves it to your account, so the same timezone applies on every device you sign in on. After that, you can change it manually from a list of named zones (UTC, the United States zones, Arizona, Hawaii, Alaska, London, Paris, Tokyo, Sydney).

The timezone affects what the app considers “today,” which week or month a transaction belongs to, and the date boundaries used by reports and the planner’s running totals.

Why auto-detect once instead of always? Because the timezone changes which day, week, and month every transaction is bucketed into. Detecting on every load would shift those boundaries while you traveled, so the same transaction could move between weeks. Detecting once and leaving the choice to you keeps the planner and the reports stable until you decide to change it.

A note on motion

The app’s animations are short. Charts use a single 400-millisecond entry transition on first render and do not re-animate when you hover a legend or scroll through the page.

The app does not respond to a system reduce-motion preference. If you need to disable motion, the OS-level reduce-motion setting will not silence the chart entry animations.

Quick reference

If you want…	Open Settings, then…
Bigger or smaller text (tablets and desktop)	Accessibility, drag the Text Size slider
Light or dark mode	Theme Variant, flip the toggle
A higher-contrast theme	Open the hamburger menu, tap Themes, browse the Community segment
Compact, abbreviated, or full date labels	Date Format, pick Short, Medium, or Long
The right timezone for “today” calculations	Timezone, pick from the list

Themes and Icons: how palettes and per-budget themes work.
Reports: the charts that pick up the text size and theme settings.