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Abstract Recently, Dvořák, Norin, and Postle introduced flexibility as an extension of list coloring on graphs (J Graph Theory 92(3):191–206, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1002/jgt.22447 ). In this new setting, each vertex v in some subset of V ( G ) has a request for a certain color r ( v ) in its list of colors L ( v ). The goal is to find an L coloring satisfying many, but not necessarily all, of the requests. The main studied question is whether there exists a universal constant $$\varepsilon >0$$ ε > 0 such that any graph G in some graph class $$\mathscr {C}$$ C satisfies at least $$\varepsilon$$ ε proportion of the requests. More formally, for $$k > 0$$ k > 0 the goal is to prove that for any graph $$G \in \mathscr {C}$$ G ∈ C on vertex set V , with any list assignment L of size k for each vertex, and for every $$R \subseteq V$$ R ⊆ V and a request vector $$(r(v): v\in R, ~r(v) \in L(v))$$ ( r ( v ) : v ∈ R , r ( v ) ∈ L ( v ) ) , there exists an L -coloring of G satisfying at least $$\varepsilon |R|$$ ε | R | requests. If this is true, then $$\mathscr {C}$$ C is called $$\varepsilon$$ ε - flexible for lists of size k . Choi, Clemen, Ferrara, Horn, Ma, and Masařík (Discrete Appl Math 306:20–132, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dam.2021.09.021 ) introduced the notion of weak flexibility , where $$R = V$$ R = V . We further develop this direction by introducing a tool to handle weak flexibility. We demonstrate this new tool by showing that for every positive integer b there exists $$\varepsilon (b)>0$$ ε ( b ) > 0 so that the class of planar graphs without $$K_4, C_5 , C_6 , C_7, B_b$$ K 4 , C 5 , C 6 , C 7 , B b is weakly $$\varepsilon (b)$$ ε ( b ) -flexible for lists of size 4 (here $$K_n$$ K n , $$C_n$$ C n and $$B_n$$ B n are the complete graph, a cycle, and a book on n vertices, respectively). We also show that the class of planar graphs without $$K_4, C_5 , C_6 , C_7, B_5$$ K 4 , C 5 , C 6 , C 7 , B 5 is $$\varepsilon$$ ε -flexible for lists of size 4. The results are tight as these graph classes are not even 3-colorable.