Black Screen
Fills the whole screen with pure black, #000000, and nothing else. It is the closest a browser tab gets to switching a screen off: no clock, no wallpaper, no notification light in the corner of your eye.
Press Esc at any point to come straight back to this page.
What people use a black screen for
- Blanking a second monitor. A long download, a render or a build finishes on its own, and a bright panel next to you the whole time does not help it along. Drag this tab onto that screen and the display stays on, so nothing sleeps or reshuffles your windows, but it stops pulling your eyes sideways.
- Leaving a machine on overnight. A screen saver eventually starts doing something, a lock screen cycles wallpapers, and both light the room. A static black page just sits there.
- Seeing what is actually on the glass. Dust, fingerprints, hairs and dried spray marks are almost invisible on a bright page and obvious against black, which is why it is worth a look before and after cleaning.
- Judging reflections and glare. With nothing on the screen, what you see is your room: a window behind you, a lamp, the shape of your own desk. It is the quickest way to work out where a monitor should actually face.
On OLED, black really is off
An OLED or AMOLED pixel makes its own light, so a black pixel is a pixel switched off. On a full black page most of the panel is genuinely dark, which is why the black looks deeper here than on any LCD and why the screen draws less power while it is showing it. That power saving is real on OLED and AMOLED only. An LCD, including every panel sold as LED, IPS, VA or TN, lights the whole screen from one backlight that stays on regardless of what is displayed, so a black page there saves nothing at all - it just looks dark.
Clean it with the screen off, then check it here
Wiping a screen while it is lit smears what you are trying to see, and it is easy to press harder than you should on a panel that is warm and running. Turn the screen off, let it cool, use a dry microfiber cloth first and only then a little screen cleaner sprayed onto the cloth rather than onto the glass. When you are done, open this page again: black shows every streak you left behind, and a white field afterwards shows the ones black hides.
A black field is also half of a proper pixel check. Any pixel stuck bright - a permanent red, green, blue or white dot - stands out against black immediately, and the rest of the check needs the other solid colors in turn. Run the full dead pixel test
Frequently asked questions
Does a black screen save battery?
On an OLED or AMOLED screen, yes, and measurably: black pixels are unpowered pixels, so a mostly black display costs very little. On an LCD, no. The backlight behind an LCD burns the same power whether the picture is black or white, and the liquid crystal layer in front of it only decides how much of that light gets out. If you want an LCD to use less power, lower the brightness or turn the screen off.
Is it safe to leave a black screen up for hours?
Yes. A static image is only a burn-in risk when it is a bright one, because burn-in comes from pixels ageing at different rates and a black pixel is barely working. Leaving a black page up is closer to resting the panel than straining it. The only thing to keep in mind is that this page keeps the screen awake while it is in full screen, so the display will not drop into its own power saving until you leave.
Why not just turn the monitor off?
Sometimes that is the right answer. But a monitor that switches off or sleeps often tells the computer it has gone, and on Windows and macOS alike that can shuffle every window onto the remaining screen and leave you rearranging them afterwards. A black page keeps the display awake and connected while showing you nothing, which is what most people actually want from it.
Will a black screen show scratches too?
It shows some of them. A scratch in the coating catches room light and appears as a thin bright line against black, while a mark that only shows up on a white page is usually dirt rather than damage. If a line stays in the same place through black, white and every color in between, and does not move when you wipe it, it is in the panel or its coating rather than on it.