Burn-in Conditioning
A slow full-screen color cycle that walks every subpixel through its whole range for as long as you leave it running. It is the pixel refresh exercise people try against mild image retention, not a cure for burn-in.
What this is, and what it is not
It may help image retention: a mark left by a static image that has not settled yet. Cycling color over the whole panel gives the retained area and everything around it the same workload for a while, which is what lets retention even out.
It cannot undo burn-in. Once pixels have permanently aged, nothing displayed on the screen restores them. If the mark has survived weeks of ordinary viewing, this will not remove it, and any tool that promises otherwise is guessing.
On an OLED TV, use the set's own routine instead. Pixel refresh, panel refresh or panel noise reduction, depending on the brand, sits in the picture or device care settings and recalibrates the panel from the inside. It does a better job than any web page can, so run that first and come back here only if your set has nothing of the kind.
Set up the session
Before you start
- Plug the device in. Hours of full-screen color will flatten a battery, and a laptop that dies halfway through has conditioned nothing.
- Turn off sleep and the screensaver in your system settings. The page asks the browser to keep the screen awake, but the browser cannot overrule the operating system on every device.
- Expect the panel to get warm, and warmer still on battery. Leave the vents clear and do not run it in a closed laptop bag or under a blanket.
- Leave this tab in front. A background tab gets throttled, so the session pauses itself and waits for you instead of pretending it ran.
What the cycle does
One revolution takes about 48 seconds. The first two thirds are a hue sweep at full saturation, which drives the red, green and blue subpixels up and down out of step with each other so that each one spends the same total time at full output. The last third is neutral: full white, where all three run at their ceiling together, then mid gray on the way back into the sweep. Everything moves slowly on purpose - there is nothing here that flashes, and a slow fade costs the machine almost nothing over eight hours.
How to use it
- Find out what you are dealing with first. The OLED burn-in test shows whether the mark is fresh retention or something permanent, and gives you a before picture. Open the OLED burn-in test
- Plug the device in, work through the checklist and pick a session length. Longer sessions are for marks that did not budge after a short one.
- Start it and leave the screen alone. You can pause at any point, and closing the tab asks you to confirm so a running session is not lost by accident.
- When it finishes, run the burn-in test again on the same spot and compare.
Frequently asked questions
Does this remove burn-in?
No. Nothing displayed on a panel restores pixels that have permanently aged. What cycling color can do is help a recent image retention fade, and even there it is a maybe rather than a promise. If several hours change nothing at all, the mark is permanent.
How long should I run it?
There is no proven number. An hour is a sensible first try. Four to eight hours, usually overnight, is what people fall back on for a stubborn retention. Running it for days on end is not a stronger version of the same idea, because the panel is being driven the whole time and that is wear too.
Is it safe to leave running?
The colors move slowly, so there is no flashing and no strobe. The real considerations are heat and power: the panel is lit edge to edge for hours, so keep the device plugged in and ventilated. A few hours of moving color is gentle next to what a static image does to the same panel.
My TV has a pixel refresh option. Should I use that instead?
Yes. LG, Sony, Samsung and Panasonic OLED sets all ship some form of panel or pixel refresh that measures the panel and compensates it from the inside, which is far more effective than showing colors on the screen. Look in the picture or device care settings, run that, and come back here only if your set has nothing of the kind.