OLED Burn-In: What It Is and How to Prevent It

OLED screens give deep blacks and strong colors, but pixels that show the same bright image for a very long time can wear unevenly. Good habits keep the risk low.

Burn-in and image retention

Image retention is a faint ghost that fades after a short time. Burn-in is permanent: the pixels that showed a static image, like a menu bar or channel logo, have aged faster than the rest.

Most people never see burn-in in normal use, but it is more likely with very bright, static content shown for many hours every day.

Habits that help

• Lower brightness when you do not need it high.
• Use dark mode and auto-hide taskbars or menus where you can.
• Turn the screen off, or let it sleep, instead of leaving a static page on.
• Use a moving screensaver on a spare display rather than a still image.
• Avoid leaving bright test screens, such as a pure white page, running for hours.

Using test screens safely

Solid-color tests are fine for a few minutes. The OLED protection button on the screen pages shifts brightness slightly every 30 seconds, which varies pixel use while a screen is on for a long time.

To check for uneven wear, open the Gray Screen in a dim room and look for patches that are brighter or darker than the rest. Compare against other solid colors.

What the maker offers

Many OLED phones, TVs and monitors have built-in pixel refresh or pixel shift features. Look in your device settings. Do not run a refresh routine more often than the manual suggests.