Screen Burn-In Test

Fill your screen with three shades of plain gray that make leftover shapes easy to spot — the ghosts of taskbars, logos and status bars that OLED screens can develop over time.

The test goes fullscreen. Click or press any key for the next shade, press Esc to leave.

How to Check a Screen for Burn-In

This test fills your screen with plain gray — the background where leftover shapes are easiest to spot. Here is what you are looking at, and what it means if you find something.

A ghost that fades vs one that stays

If you see a faint leftover shape, do not panic yet — screens have two kinds of ghosts. Image retention is temporary: after a long stretch of the same picture, a shadow of it lingers for minutes and then fades on its own. Burn-in is the permanent version: the shadow is still there tomorrow, and next month. The test looks the same for both — time is what tells them apart.

Why OLED screens are the ones at risk

OLED screens — most modern phones, many TVs and a growing number of laptops — light up every pixel individually, and each pixel slowly wears as it works. Pixels that spend months showing the same bright logo age faster than their neighbors, and that difference becomes a permanent shadow. Regular LCD screens work differently, with one backlight behind the whole picture, so true burn-in is very rare on them.

What actually causes it

Burn-in comes from the same picture staying on screen for hours at high brightness, day after day. The usual culprits are things that never move: a news channel's logo, a game's health bar, a navigation app left on in the car, or a phone kept at maximum brightness with the same home screen. One long movie night will not do it — it is the months of repetition that leave a mark.

How to prevent burn-in

Let things move. Auto-hide the taskbar and dock, use dark mode where bright bars would otherwise sit still, keep brightness reasonable, and set a screen saver or auto-sleep for idle time. On an OLED TV, let it run its pixel refresher when it asks — it happens in standby, not while you watch. Modern screens also quietly shift the picture by a pixel now and then; leave that setting on.

The truth about "burn-in fixer" videos

Videos and apps that promise to "fix burn-in" by flashing colors can only help with the temporary kind — the ghost that would have faded on its own anyway. Real burn-in means some pixels have physically aged more than their neighbors, and no video can un-age them. If a shape stays after a night of rest, it is permanent. Some TVs can run a built-in pixel refresher that may soften it slightly, but the honest fix is prevention.

Dead pixel test
While you are at it: cycle solid colors to find pixels that are stuck on one color or not lighting up at all.
Check for dead pixels
White screen
A plain bright screen — handy as a light source and for spotting dark spots and dust at a glance.
Open the white screen

Frequently asked questions

Start the test and look at each gray screen for a few seconds. You are looking for faint outlines of things that usually sit still on your screen: the taskbar, a channel logo, the clock and battery icons of a status bar, a chat sidebar. If you can make out where a static element "lives" even though the screen is showing plain gray, that area has retention or burn-in.
Time. Image retention fades on its own — give the screen a few hours showing varied content, or simply turned off, and the ghost disappears. Burn-in survives the night: if the outline is still visible on a gray screen the next day, the pixels themselves have aged unevenly and the mark is permanent.
Real burn-in cannot be undone — the affected pixels have physically worn more than the rest, and there is no way to restore them. Some OLED TVs have a built-in refresher cycle that can make it slightly less visible. What you can always do is stop it from getting worse: vary what is on the screen, lower the brightness, and let the ghosted element move or hide.
Almost never. A regular LCD screen lights the whole picture with one backlight, so its pixels do not wear individually the way OLED pixels do. LCDs can show temporary image retention after very long static use, but it fades by itself. If your LCD shows a permanent mark, it is more likely physical damage than burn-in.
Keep the same bright picture from sitting on screen for hours. On a phone: reasonable brightness, auto-lock, dark mode. On a TV: watch varied content, enable the screen saver, and let the pixel refresher run when the TV asks. On a computer with an OLED display: auto-hide the taskbar or dock, use a dark theme, and set the screen to turn off when idle. None of this requires babying the screen — just avoiding months of the exact same bright image.
Yes, completely. The test runs entirely on your device — it simply shows plain gray screens and never sends anything anywhere. There is nothing to install and nothing to sign up for. It also cannot harm your screen: showing plain gray for a minute is the gentlest thing a screen can do.