Dead pixel on your screen: what should you do?
You have found a dot on your screen that should not be there. Before anything else, know that most of these turn out to be dust, and of the genuine faults, roughly half are the kind that can be repaired for free in about an hour. This page takes the decision in order: confirm the dot is real, work out which fault it is, attempt the fix if the fix can work, and if it cannot, decide between a warranty claim and living with it.
Confirm it with a dead pixel test
On this page
- Is it actually a dead pixel? — the three checks that eliminate most reported faults in two minutes
- Is it dead, stuck or something else entirely? — the black-and-white check, and the faults that are neither
- What should you do about a stuck pixel? — the free fix that works often enough to be worth an hour
- Can a dead pixel be fixed? — no, and it is worth understanding why so you do not waste an evening
- Should you claim warranty for a dead pixel? — thresholds, timing, and what to have ready before you call
- What should you do on a laptop, phone, monitor or TV? — where the answer changes by device
- Will a dead pixel get worse over time? — when one dot stays one dot, and when it is the start of something
- How do you stop it happening again? — the habits worth changing, and the one that does nothing
Is it actually a dead pixel?
Start here, because most reports do not survive this step.
- Clean the screen. Dust and grease account for a large share of suspected dead pixels and wipe straight off. Use a dry microfibre cloth — the safe method, never household glass cleaner, and no hard pressure, which can create the real thing.
- Change your viewing angle. Dirt sits on the outside of the glass and appears to shift against the image as you move. A pixel fault is inside the panel and stays welded to one point.
- Reboot, and swap the cable on an external monitor. Anything that moves or disappears was a driver or cable artefact, not a pixel.
If the dot is still there after all three, it is genuinely in the panel and worth identifying properly.
Is it dead, stuck or something else entirely?
This decides everything that follows, and it takes seconds. Display a full black screen, then a full white one:
- Visible on white, invisible on black — dead. No power reaching it. Not repairable.
- Visible on black, invisible on white — stuck. Still powered, jammed on one colour. Often repairable.
- White on both — a hot pixel, all three sub-pixels jammed on. Treated like a stuck pixel.
Some things are neither, and they need entirely different answers:
- Backlight bleed — brighter patches, not dots, strongest at the edges of a black screen. No pixel is faulty.
- A cluster — several adjacent failures point at impact or liquid damage, which spreads. Act while under warranty.
- OLED burn-in — a faint ghost of a static image, uneven wear rather than a failure.
- Banding or a colour cast — a contrast or profile problem. Our screen contrast test separates it out.
Dead versus stuck pixels covers the distinction in full.
What should you do about a stuck pixel?
If it is stuck, you have the good version of this problem. The sub-pixel still has power and has simply seized, and rapidly cycling colours through it can shake it loose. The method is non-invasive, risks nothing, and a reasonable share of stuck pixels do come back.
Position it over the fault, turn off automatic sleep and screen lock first — that is the usual reason it appears not to work — and leave it for at least an hour. Several hours is better, and overnight is the reasonable second attempt. If a full night changes nothing, the sub-pixel has almost certainly failed outright rather than seized, and it is dead in everything but name.
Every method for reviving a stuck pixel covers the alternatives, including the pressure technique — which genuinely can work, genuinely can make things permanently worse, and must never be attempted on OLED.
Can a dead pixel be fixed?
No. A dead pixel means the transistor driving it has stopped delivering power altogether, so there is nothing left to send a signal to. Every software method — flashing colours, cycling patterns, downloadable utilities — works by making a pixel switch rapidly. A pixel with no power cannot switch.
This matters because anything advertising a dead pixel repair is describing a stuck-pixel treatment, and some of it wants installer-level access to your machine for the privilege. There is no reason to grant that for something a browser already does.
Pressure and heat will not help either, and both can turn one dead pixel into a cluster plus a permanent mark. What a dead pixel is covers the underlying failure if you want the detail. The realistic options for a dead pixel are a warranty claim or acceptance, and the rest of this page is about choosing between them.
Should you claim warranty for a dead pixel?
Most manufacturers publish a pixel policy built around a threshold: a number of failed pixels before a panel counts as defective. A single dead pixel commonly falls below it on consumer hardware. Some recurring patterns:
- Bright counts for more than dark. A stuck pixel lit against black is usually weighted more heavily than a dead one.
- Position matters. Centre-screen faults are treated more seriously than the same fault near a corner.
- Clusters count separately and often trip a policy that scattered pixels would not.
- Class matters. Professional and premium displays are stricter, and some carry a zero-defect guarantee a single pixel will trigger.
Timing decides more than the policy does. A manufacturing fault is present from the first power-up, and most return windows run for a short period after purchase. Within the return window you can often simply return the device, no threshold argument required. Outside it, you are arguing the policy.
Before contacting anyone: photograph the fault on both black and white backgrounds, note its position, confirm it survives a reboot and a cable change, and read the policy for your specific model rather than the brand in general. We publish the results people report to us by manufacturer if you want to know how common this is on your brand first.
What should you do on a laptop, phone, monitor or TV?
The diagnosis is the same everywhere; the practicalities are not.
Laptop. Check the hinge area and edges — pressure from a closed lid is a common cause, and faults cluster where the panel is stressed. The screen is rarely replaceable separately at a sensible price, so the warranty claim matters more here than anywhere.
Phone or tablet. Very high pixel density hides faults, and most are OLED, so test on white rather than black. Remove any screen protector first — a bubble under tempered glass is the most common false alarm. See testing a phone screen, or testing an iPhone.
External monitor. Rule out the cable and the graphics driver before blaming the panel — a failing cable is more common than a pixel fault. Testing a monitor covers it.
Television. You usually cannot open a browser, so use the full-screen test videos, and switch off motion smoothing, dynamic contrast and eco modes first — all three change what reaches the panel and can hide or invent faults.
OLED, on any device. Faults go dark rather than bright, the flashing fix rarely helps, and the pressure method must never be used. See pixel faults on OLED.
Will a dead pixel get worse over time?
Usually not, and knowing the exception is what tells you whether to act now or not at all.
A single pixel that failed through a manufacturing defect generally stays exactly that: one pixel, indefinitely. It does not infect its neighbours and there is no mechanism by which it would. If it has been unchanged for a year, it will most likely be unchanged next year.
Spreading points at a physical cause instead. Impact damage severs connections across a region rather than at a point, and the surrounding structure can keep giving way for weeks. Liquid damage behaves the same way — corrosion continues quietly long after the device has dried — and does not stop on its own.
So: a stable single dot is not a warning sign, and if it falls below the warranty threshold you can reasonably decide to live with it. A growing cluster is a warning sign, and it is worth acting while the screen is still under warranty rather than waiting to see how far it goes. What causes dead pixels covers how each kind of damage presents.
How do you stop it happening again?
Manufacturing defects are out of your hands. The rest are not:
- Never press on the panel, and check nothing is on the keyboard before closing a laptop.
- Keep it cool — clear vents, out of direct sun.
- Vary what is on screen during long idle periods, and blank the screen rather than leaving a static wallpaper.
- Run a sensible brightness. Permanent maximum is extra stress for no benefit indoors.
- Keep liquid away and clean gently and regularly so you never need to scrub.
- Test every new screen the day it arrives, while a claim is still easy.
One thing that does nothing: running a colour-cycling pattern preventively on a healthy screen. It has no protective effect and simply adds hours of use. And whatever you found, let us know how your test went — those reports are what let us say anything useful about which brands ship clean panels.
