How to fix OLED burn-in

The shadow you cannot wipe off

It usually starts small. You pause a game on a dark screen and notice a faint row of buttons floating where the HUD sits. Or you finish work, the monitor goes to a blank desktop, and there — exactly where your taskbar lives — is a soft gray stripe. TV owners know the third version: the channel logo burned into the corner, visible in every bright scene.

Your first instinct is to clean the screen. It is not dust. Your second instinct is to search “OLED burn-in fix” and hope for a quick cure. Before spending money or looping a six-hour video, it helps to understand what that shadow actually is — because the two possible causes need completely different responses.

Why it happens — two very different causes

Think of every OLED pixel as a tiny flashlight. Each one makes its own light, and each one ages a little every time it is used.

Cause one: the flashlight is tired. If the same pixels stay lit in the same shape for months — the taskbar, the logo, the HUD — they get more use than their neighbors and dim slightly faster. The result looks like a shadow, because that region really is a little less bright. That is burn-in: uneven wear. It does not reverse, any more than a flashlight bulb gets younger.

Cause two: the flashlight is just slow to settle. When a pixel has shown the same color for hours, it can hold a faint trace for a while after the content changes — the panel equivalent of the afterimage you get after staring at a bright window. That is image retention. It looks alarming in the first five minutes and usually fades within minutes to hours.

Both look identical in a photo. The difference shows over time — which is exactly what the next step measures.

Find out which one you have

The free OLED burn-in test works in three moves:

1. Look. The screen shows clean full-screen fields — white, gray, near-black, black — and asks one simple question per field: “can you see the shadow here?”
2. Wait. The screen then plays a gently changing field for 5, 10 or 15 minutes while you go make coffee.
3. Compare. The same gray field comes back. Is the shadow gone, weaker, or exactly the same?

The answer maps directly to a verdict: gone or fading means temporary retention and it will keep improving; unchanged points to wear. You are not asked to trust a score — you watch the evidence yourself, on your own screen.

How the browser test does it

There is no download and no account. The test is a web page, and everything happens inside your browser:

• The seven test fields — including slowly moving ones — are drawn locally, on your device.
• A timer keeps track of the fade check and pauses politely if you switch tabs.
• Your answers and your result stay in the browser; nothing is uploaded anywhere.
• The final verdict follows a short, published set of rules — the same logic a careful technician would apply, written down instead of hidden.

What it deliberately does not do: claim to measure the panel like a lab instrument. It structures what your eyes can see and makes the comparison fair. That honesty is the point — a tool that admits its limits is more useful than one that pretends.

What helps, what does not

If the shadow faded or disappeared

Good news: it was retention. Keep using the screen, mix up your content, and re-check in a week if you want certainty. Nothing needs fixing.

If the shadow is unchanged

Then you are dealing with wear, and honesty is the best plan:

• Run the panel's built-in refresher once. LG calls it Pixel Refresher, Samsung calls it Panel Refresh — every major brand has one, and this guide to telling burn-in from retention explains what it can and cannot do. It compensates wear; it does not rewind it.
• Make the shape less likely to deepen. Auto-hide the taskbar, rotate games, enable the logo-dimming feature on TVs. Wear grows where static content repeats — small habit changes slow it down a lot.
• Keep evidence. Photograph the screen on the same gray field, note the date, save the test report. If the device is under warranty and the shape matches a taskbar or logo, that record is what a policy conversation needs.

What does not help

• “Burn-in fixer” videos. A flashing video cannot restore worn pixels. At best it helps mild retention fade; at worst it adds hours of new static content.
• Pressing or rubbing the panel. This damages more pixels. Never press an OLED to “massage” it back to life.
• Running the refresher every day. It is a compensation routine, not a reset button. Use it when the manufacturer recommends it, then re-test.

One more honest limit: a browser test observes, it does not certify. Whether a manufacturer accepts burn-in as a warranty fault depends on their policy, not on any website — including this one.