How to Fix Dead Pixels (and When You Cannot)

A dead pixel cannot be fixed by software and a stuck pixel sometimes can. Here is how to tell them apart, what actually works, and what will damage your panel.

Almost every guide to fixing dead pixels is really a guide to fixing stuck pixels, and the two are not the same thing. Getting the distinction right saves you from spending an evening on something that was never going to work, and from trying a technique that turns one bad pixel into a bad patch.

Dead, stuck, or neither

Open the dead pixel test and run the full cycle, then judge against this.

• Dead. Black on every single colour, including pure white. The pixel is receiving no power at all. Nothing in software reaches it, and no amount of flashing, pressing or waiting will change that.
• Stuck. Permanently lit in one or more subpixels, so it shows as a red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow or white dot, and it stays that colour on every screen including black. This is the one worth trying to fix.
• Hot. A stuck pixel with all three subpixels on, which reads as a bright white dot. It behaves like any other stuck pixel.
• Neither. A soft, blurred patch rather than a sharp dot, the same on every colour. That is pressure damage behind the panel, not a pixel at all. See white spots on a laptop screen.

Before anything else, clean the screen. A genuinely large share of reported dead pixels are specks of dust, and a dry microfibre cloth resolves them in five seconds. The cleaning guide has the method that will not damage a coating.

What actually works on a stuck pixel

Rapid colour cycling is the only technique with a plausible mechanism and no downside. It forces the transistors driving the stuck subpixel to switch state many times a second, which sometimes frees an element that has settled into a jammed position. The stuck pixel fixer on this site flashes red, green and blue at about six times a second, which is fast enough to be effective and slow enough to be survivable.

• Run it for 10 to 20 minutes, not 30 seconds. This is not a quick process.
• Keep the device plugged in and stop the screen from sleeping.
• Check afterwards on black and then on white.
• A second attempt immediately afterwards rarely helps. A second attempt on another day sometimes does, since thermal cycling appears to play a part.
• If you have photosensitive epilepsy, do not run it, and turn the screen away from anyone in the room who might.

Be realistic. This frees a stuck pixel some of the time. The longer it has been stuck, the lower the chance. It costs nothing and risks nothing, which is the whole argument for trying it before anything else.

The pressure method, and its real cost

The other widely repeated technique is physical: switch the display off, lay a soft damp cloth over the affected pixel, press very lightly with something blunt and rounded, and switch the display back on while releasing the pressure. On an LCD it works occasionally, by redistributing liquid crystal in the affected cell.

It also produces the exact fault described in the laptop white spots guide, permanently, when people press harder than they should, which is most people. It can void a warranty, and on any bonded display it spreads damage rather than fixing it. Do not attempt it at all on an OLED panel, a phone, a tablet or any laptop with a glass bonded screen. If the display is under warranty, claim on the warranty instead, because a successful claim is better than a coin flip that can end with a larger mark than you started with.

What manufacturers will replace

Nearly every display maker publishes a pixel defect policy, and nearly every one of them permits some number of defective pixels before a panel is considered faulty. The thresholds vary by brand, by panel size and by whether the product is sold as a professional or consumer item, and a single defect on a consumer monitor is very often within specification.

Two things improve your position. Test on day one, because a fault inside the retailer's return window is a return rather than a warranty claim, and returns do not care about pixel thresholds. And photograph the defect against the black screen if it is bright, or the white screen if it is dark, in a dim room with the exposure locked. A support agent who can see the fault moves faster than one reading about it.

When to stop

If the pixel is dead rather than stuck, stop now: there is no fix, and every technique you will find suggested carries risk with no upside. If it is stuck and two sessions of colour cycling have not moved it, stop as well. One defective pixel on a panel you look at every day genuinely does disappear from your attention within a couple of weeks, and it will never cost you as much as a panel you damaged trying to perfect it.