Something not working? Ask us

How long does it take?

Twelve to eighteen minutes. That's deliberately longer than a quick quiz. You take it once for a given phone, and it decides whether the rest of the app works for you. A shorter test that returned the wrong colour, or wrongly told you colour does not help, would cost you far more than the extra taps.

Can I stop half way through?

Yes, and you won't lose anything. Your place is saved after every single answer, so you can put it down and pick it up whenever you like.

It told me colour did not help. Is something wrong?

No, and it's a common result. For a lot of people it's the contrast that matters, not the hue. Open Appearance and lower the Contrast setting before anything else, then try a larger line spacing. The space between lines does more for reading comfort than almost anything else in the app.

The test is built to be able to reach that conclusion. Every background is compared against plain grey, so it can tell you that nothing beat plain rather than handing you a winner regardless.

I took it twice and got different answers

That happens with the clinical versions too; test-to-test agreement in this area is genuinely poor. It's why the app shows you how consistent your own answers were, and why the result is described as a starting point rather than a measurement. What settles it is whether reading actually feels easier over a few days.

Do I have to take it again on a new phone?

Yes. Screens differ enough, in the colours they can show and the light they give off, that carrying a result across would be a guess rather than a measurement.

Should I turn anything off before I start?

• Auto-brightness, so the screen does not change part way.
• Night Shift and True Tone, which change the colour your screen actually emits and would quietly invalidate the result.

Then sit as you normally would, in the light you normally read in.

Why is the text set so tightly?

On purpose, and it's the one place the app breaks its own typography rules. Closely spaced rows are what make a page resemble a striped pattern, and that striping is what provokes visual stress, so a comfortably spaced passage would hide the very thing being measured. It applies inside the test and nowhere else.

Why is the writing so boring?

Deliberately. Anything with a hook in it gets read, and somebody following a story has stopped noticing how the page looks, which is the only thing being asked about. The passages are meant to be legible and immediately forgettable, and they change every few questions so that no single one turns into a familiar grey shape you stop reading altogether.

An earlier version used scrambled words, borrowed from a timed reading test where guessing the next word really does contaminate the result. Choosing a background colour is not timed, and in clinics overlays are chosen over ordinary reading material. The scrambled version made the test feel broken and bought nothing.

Do I have to connect an email account?

No. You can paste links and photograph pages without connecting anything at all. Connecting a mailbox is only for reading newsletters you already subscribe to.

Which of my mail does it read?

Only the single folder or label you choose. Not your inbox, and nothing outside that folder. Rilver never sends, modifies or deletes mail.

How do I stop it reading my mail?

Disconnect the mailbox in Settings, which deletes the stored access token immediately. You can also remove access from your email provider's own security page. For Google that is myaccount.google.com/permissions.

A newsletter has not appeared

Check it actually landed in the folder Rilver watches, because most mail rules file newsletters somewhere else. If it's in the right folder and still missing after the next sync, send us the sender's address and roughly when it arrived.

How do I delete my account?

From inside the app, in a few taps, with no request or wait. The steps are on deleting your account, along with what does and does not get removed.

What do you do with my data?

The privacy policy covers it in full, including the one use beyond serving you personally, which is that your colour test answers help improve the test itself.

How do I cancel a subscription?

Through your app store account rather than through Rilver, because that is where the subscription lives. Deleting the app does not cancel it.