What burn-in actually is

Every pixel on an OLED screen makes its own light, and the organic material in each subpixel slowly loses brightness the more it’s used. If one area shows the same bright, static content for a long time, such as a status bar, a taskbar, a game’s health meter or a news ticker, those pixels age faster than their neighbours. The result is a faint, permanent shadow of that content, visible on plain backgrounds.

Blue subpixels generally age fastest, which is why burn-in sometimes shows up as a slight tint rather than a dark shape.

Burn-in or image retention?

Image retention is a temporary ghost of something that was just on screen. It fades after a few minutes or hours of other content. Burn-in doesn’t fade. If you see a shape, use the screen normally for a day and check again: if it’s gone, it was retention.

How to check your screen

  1. Set brightness to about half and turn off dark mode, night mode and blue-light filters.
  2. Open the burn-in test and start with the mid gray field.
  3. Look where static things live: the status and navigation bars on a phone, the keyboard area, the taskbar on a laptop, channel logos and game HUDs on a TV.
  4. Step through the color fields. Some burn-in only shows on one color, because subpixels age at different rates.

When buying a used OLED phone, laptop or TV, this check takes under a minute and is worth doing before you pay.

What causes it

  • Static interface elements shown for many hours a day, every day.
  • High brightness, which ages pixels faster.
  • The same app or channel used for long stretches, such as a news channel with a fixed logo or ticker.
  • Turning off the display’s protection features.

How to reduce the risk

  • Keep brightness reasonable for everyday use, and save peak brightness for HDR content.
  • Hide static elements: auto-hide the taskbar and dock, use gesture navigation on phones, and pick a screen saver or short screen timeout.
  • Vary what’s on screen. Mixed content wears pixels more evenly than one app all day.
  • Leave protection features on, such as pixel shift and logo dimming.
  • Let TVs and monitors run their maintenance. Many OLED TVs and monitors run a pixel compensation routine in standby, so avoid cutting the power at the wall straight after switching off.

Can burn-in be fixed?

Not by a web page or a video. Some displays offer a manual pixel refresh in their settings, which can even out mild wear, but it uses up some of the panel’s life and shouldn’t be run often. Be wary of tools that promise to repair burn-in by flashing colors: they can’t reverse wear, and rapid flashing can be unsafe for people with photosensitivity.

Some OLED monitor makers now include burn-in in their warranty, so check your terms before paying for a repair.