Dead Pixel Fixer — Repair Stuck and Dead Pixels Free
Our free Dead Pixel Fixer draws a small square of fast, randomly coloured pixels that you drag over the fault, driving every sub-pixel underneath through its full range hundreds of times a second, which is often enough to free a liquid-crystal cell that has settled and stopped responding. It works best on a stuck pixel, one frozen on a colour rather than switched off, and only rarely on a genuinely dead pixel, which receives no power at all — but it costs nothing to try before you open a warranty claim.
Understand how our dead pixel fixer works
Ten minutes of reading before you start will save you an hour of running the tool on a fault it was never going to repair. Most attempts fail for one of three reasons: the mark was never a pixel fault to begin with, the screen went to sleep partway through, or the fault was dead rather than stuck and was never going to respond. Each step below builds on the one before it, and the links jump straight to any of them.
Step 1 · Understand what you are looking at
A screen is a grid of pixels, and every pixel is three sub-pixels: one red, one green, one blue. The macro photograph beside this text shows them as the coloured stripes they really are. Your eye blends each trio into a single colour, and the mix of the three intensities is what produces every shade the display can show.
On an LCD, each sub-pixel is a cell of liquid crystal sitting between two filters. A small voltage twists the crystal, which lets more or less light through from the backlight behind it, and a tiny transistor at every cell holds that voltage steady until the next frame arrives. We take the panel apart layer by layer in our guide to how LCD screens work.
That gives you two very different ways for one dot to go wrong, and the difference decides everything that follows. If the transistor has failed, the cell receives nothing and the pixel is dark for good. If the transistor is fine but the crystal has settled and stopped responding, the pixel is stuck showing whatever it last displayed — and a stuck crystal can sometimes be shaken loose. That is the whole idea behind the fixer.
Neither failure is your fault, and both are more common than manufacturers like to admit. Pressure on the panel, heat, humidity and simple age all take their toll: our guide to what causes dead pixels covers where they come from and how to avoid collecting more.
Step 2 · Identify which fault you have
Now that you know what is underneath, you can name what you are seeing. Find your symptom in the table below; the last column tells you honestly whether the rest of this page is worth your time. If you want the long version of any row, we have full guides on what a dead pixel is, on what a stuck pixel is, and on telling the two apart.
| Defect | What you see | What is happening | Will the fixer help? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stuck pixel | A dot that stays red, green, blue, cyan, magenta or yellow. Most visible on a black screen. | One or two sub-pixels are held in the on state. The cell still receives power. | Often — this is what the fixer is built for. |
| Hot pixel | A dot that stays white on every image, brightest against black. | All three sub-pixels are stuck on at once. | Sometimes — treat it exactly like a stuck pixel. |
| Dead pixel | A black dot that stays black on every colour, including a white screen. | The pixel gets no power at all, usually a failed thin-film transistor. | Rarely — nothing in software can restore power, but it costs nothing to try. |
| Dust or a smudge | A dark speck that moves, or disappears when you wipe the panel. | Dirt on the glass or on the anti-glare coating, not a fault at all. | No — clean the screen before anything else. |
| Backlight bleed or IPS glow | Bright clouding at the edges or corners on dark scenes, not a single dot. | Light escaping around the edge of the panel, or the viewing angle of an IPS layer. | No — a different fault. Measure it with BacklightBleedTest.org. |
| Pressure mark | A coloured blotch or a bright patch covering many pixels. | Physical damage to the panel, often from a knock or a tight laptop lid. | No — the damage is mechanical and permanent. |
The quickest way to tell a dead pixel from a stuck one is to run the dead pixel test and cycle black, white, red, green and blue. A dead pixel stays black on the white screen. A stuck pixel keeps its colour on the black screen. Two minutes here saves an hour later, and our guide to testing a screen properly lists the mistakes that hide a fault entirely.
Step 3 · Know why the fixer works
The fixer forces the voltage at every cell under its square to swing across the whole range, as fast as the panel will accept, over and over. A crystal that has settled into one position is repeatedly pushed out of it. Often it starts tracking the signal again, and the pixel returns to normal.
This also tells you where the limit is. Nothing drawn on a screen can reach a pixel whose transistor has failed, because that pixel is no longer receiving a signal to respond to. No software can repair it — not ours, not anyone else's, whatever the claim. That is why stuck pixels often recover and dead pixels seldom do.
Knowing this changes how you should read the result. If your fault is a dead pixel, a failed hour is the expected outcome, not a sign you did it wrong, and what to do about a dead pixel on your screen sets out the realistic options. Flashing colour is also not the only technique people use, and we have collected every method for reviving a bad pixel, with an honest word on which ones are worth trying.
Step 4 · Prepare your screen
Do this before you open the tool, not after. A display that blanks after ten minutes undoes the whole attempt, and it is the single most common reason people report that the fixer did nothing.
Three things to check
- Clean the panel first. Dust and grease are mistaken for pixel faults far more often than real defects. Our guide covers how to clean a screen safely without wrecking an anti-glare coating.
- Run at native resolution. A scaled image spreads one source pixel across several real ones, so the square will not line up with the fault. Check with our screen resolution test.
- Stop the screen sleeping. Turn off both the screen saver and the display timeout, using the steps for your system below.
Put these settings back when you are done. A monitor left on Never will sit lit all night, and on a laptop it will drain the battery flat.
Turning off sleep, by operating system
macOS
- On Ventura and later, open System Settings → Lock Screen.
- Set Turn display off on power adapter when inactive to Never.
- On older versions the same setting is System Preferences → Energy Saver → Turn display off after.
- Set Start Screen Saver when inactive to Never as well.
Windows 11 and 10
- Open Settings → System → Power & battery.
- Expand Screen and sleep and set both display options to Never.
- Right-click the desktop, choose Personalise → Lock screen → Screen saver, and set it to (None).
Linux (GNOME / Ubuntu)
- Open Settings → Power.
- Set Screen Blank to Never and turn off Automatic Suspend.
- Under Privacy → Screen Lock, switch off Automatic Screen Lock.
ChromeOS
- Open Settings → Device → Power.
- Set When idle to Keep display on, both on battery and while charging.
- Turn off Sleep when lid is closed if you are running a Chromebook on an external monitor.
Step 5 · Run the fixer
- Open the fixer and dismiss the instruction panel. The browser goes full screen and a flashing square appears.
- Drag the square onto the faulty pixel. Precision matters, because the square only treats the pixels it covers. Zoom in physically — put your face close to the screen — rather than guessing.
- Change the background colour with the arrow keys or the colour buttons if you lose sight of the fault while positioning the square.
- Leave it alone for at least an hour. Resist checking every two minutes; you will not see a gradual change, only a before and an after.
START THE FIXER
On a phone or tablet, a browser cannot drive the panel this way. Use the full-screen fix videos instead, played at the highest quality your connection allows. Pick the one that matches your screen shape: 16:9 for most phones, 4:3 for an iPad, or the full list of dead pixel test videos for anything else.
Step 6 · Judge the result
Check by switching to a plain black screen and then a plain white one, not by staring at the flashing square. Rapid colour change hides exactly the kind of small difference you are looking for, and a solid red, green or blue screen confirms which sub-pixel was at fault.
There is no fixed timing, and anyone who quotes one is guessing. Some stuck pixels release within seconds. Most that respond at all do so inside the first hour. A stubborn one can take a full day of intermittent treatment. A workable schedule is twenty minutes, then an hour, then overnight, checking between each.
After roughly twenty-four hours of total run time with no change, stop. The odds do not improve beyond that point, and your effort is better spent on Step 7.
On an OLED panel, keep the brightness moderate and do not run the fixer for days on end. The pattern constantly changes, so it will not burn in, but sustained high brightness ages the emitters. LCD panels are unaffected.
Step 7 · If it did not work
Two options remain, and they are not equal. One risks your screen. The other costs nothing but time, and is the one most people should take.
The pressure method
With the fixer still running, wrap a finger in a soft microfibre cloth and press very gently on the faulty pixel for ten to twenty seconds, then release. The aim is to nudge the crystal mechanically while the signal is cycling. Some people report it working where software alone did not.
This can permanently damage a panel. Too much pressure creates a mark far larger than the pixel you were trying to fix, and on an OLED it can kill the emitters outright. Never press on a laptop screen with the lid unsupported. You do this at your own risk.
Claim it under warranty
No manufacturer replaces a panel for a single bad pixel, but every one of them publishes a threshold, and most reference the same standard. Photograph the fault against a plain background, note the defect type and how many there are, and quote the class printed in your warranty terms.
It helps to know how common the fault is on your brand before you call. We publish dead pixel statistics drawn from the tests run on this site for Samsung, Apple, Dell, HP and LG among others.
How many dead pixels a warranty actually covers
ISO 9241-307 sorts pixel faults into three types and panels into five classes. Type 1 is a permanently lit pixel, type 2 a permanently dark one, and type 3 a single faulty sub-pixel. The figures are the maximum allowed per million pixels.
| Class | Type 1 (lit) | Type 2 (dark) | Type 3 (sub-pixel) | Typically used for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Class 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Zero tolerance. Rare, and usually a paid upgrade. |
| Class I | 1 | 1 | 2 | Medical, aviation and some professional reference displays. |
| Class II | 2 | 2 | 5 | The normal grade for consumer monitors, laptops and TVs. |
| Class III | 5 | 15 | 50 | Budget and large-format panels. |
| Class IV | 50 | 150 | 500 | Industrial signage. Almost never sold to consumers. |
Per million pixels matters more than it first appears. A 1920×1080 monitor holds 2.07 million pixels, so a Class II panel is allowed about four permanently lit and four permanently dark pixels before the manufacturer owes you anything. A 3840×2160 display holds 8.29 million, and the allowance rises to roughly sixteen of each.
Almost every consumer monitor, laptop and television is sold as Class II. Read your own warranty document for the class and the count it states: a few brands promise zero bright pixels on their premium lines, and that is a claim worth making.
