AMOLED fire-in on screens and displays is permanent. Fortunately, you tin slow information technology downwardly and reduce its visibility past using a few simple tricks, which can also increase battery life.

What Is AMOLED Screen Burn-In?

dell xps 13 laptop with temporary burn-in on lcd

If your OLED screen has blotchy, uneven coloration where your navigation bar is, you have burn-in.

Each pixel within an Agile Matrix Organic Calorie-free-Emitting Diode (AMOLED) comprises red, green, and blue (and sometimes white) sub-pixels. When they emit low-cal, they decay. Burn-in appears considering private sub-pixels lose brightness at different rates, depending on its colour. The most-used lite-emitting sub-pixels, such as for navigation and condition icons, habiliment out offset, leading to uneven light production.

Then the more you employ the device, the more visible its burn-in. And the longer you display the aforementioned image, the more that image'due south outline will persist on the display.

OLED-decay-rate

It doesn't help that many user-interface buttons are white. For an AMOLED panel to produce white light, the display switches on three unlike sub-pixels in proximity to one another. Each sub-pixel produces a different color: red, blueish, and greenish. Together they appear white to the human eye. However, each of the three colors wears out at different rates, depending on the manufacturer.

For the AMOLED on most smartphones, red sub-pixels are the most durable, followed by green. Blue decays the fastest. When you see burn-in, it's often acquired by a weakening blue sub-pixel. All "fixes" aim at addressing the failing blueish sub-pixel. Retrieve, there are also tools available to fix expressionless pixels.

AMOLED Screen Burn-In Test (Android)

burn-in on pixel 2 oled

Everyone with an OLED display has some burn down-in. But oftentimes, information technology's non fully visible unless y'all display a solid color at maximum brightness. The Android operating system has access to many apps that observe burn down-in damage. The all-time of these is Screen Test.

Screen Test is ultra-simple: install and run the app. Touching the screen shifts between colors and patterns. If you lot see a persistent prototype impression or blotchy coloration, y'all take burn-in.

For my AMOLED phone, I've taken every precaution against screen burn-in. Still, the display is still a little blotchy after over a year of use. Fortunately, there are no indications of burn-in where the navigation buttons are.

If the app indicates burn-in (and almost ever does), some options are available to reduce its advent.

Download: Screen Test (Costless)

AMOLED Screen Burn-In Fixes and Hacks

Here are some of my favorite methods for avoiding AMOLED screen burn-in:

  1. Lower screen brightness and timeout.
  2. Use an immersive full-screen mode.
  3. Change wallpaper to blackness.
  4. Alter the launcher.
  5. Install OLED-friendly dark icons.
  6. Install Firefox Mobile with a night theme.
  7. You tin can even install an OLED-friendly keyboard.

Take a await at each of these in more detail, so yous can fix a burned-in screen.

1. Lower Screen Brightness and Screen Timeout

Phones with their brightness cranked up to max combined with long screen timeouts contribute to burn-in. The beginning steps everyone should take:

  1. Go to Settings.
  2. Then become to Display.
  3. Reduce screen brightness (or set up to automatic brightness).
  4. Lower screen timeout.

2. Plow on Dark Mode (Android)

Android 10's dark style finally allows for Android system menus and apps to appear night in color. Information technology will plow Chrome's user interface black, too as the Settings carte, navigation bar, and notifications shade.

To plough on dark way, become to Settings > Display > Nighttime mode and turn it on.

3. Enable Gesture Manner

Android made it possible to get rid of the navigation bar in Android 10. Once enabled, gestures allow navigation by swiping your finger on the screen. You can enable Gesture style past doing the post-obit:

  1. Become to Settings > Gestures.
  2. Choose System navigation.
  3. Choose Gesture navigation.

Afterward a brief tutorial, you're gear up to go.

4. Change Wallpaper to Black (Android)

Some might observe that the stock wallpapers in Android aren't usually suited for OLED screens. OLED screens eat very piddling energy when displaying the color black, and they practise non burn down-in when displaying blackness. Unfortunately, older Android versions don't include a solid black wallpaper selection.

Fortunately, the complimentary app Colors, from developer Tim Clark, allows users to change their wallpaper to a solid color. Only install and run the app, then choose a solid black groundwork every bit the new wallpaper.

Using black wallpaper volition ameliorate the battery functioning of your device, then this one is a win-win. Withal, if you have Android 8.0 or newer, you might already have solid colors available as a wallpaper.

Download: Colors for Android (Costless)

v. Change Your Launcher (Android, iPhone)

Install Nova Launcher (Android)

If you don't take Android 10 or newer, the default Android Launcher isn't OLED friendly. In Android 5.0, it forces the App Drawer wallpaper to white (the worst color for OLED screens). One of the best launchers for darker colors is Nova Launcher. Not merely is it more than responsive, it offers improve customization options.

Download: Nova Launcher for Android (Free)

Enable Dark Way for iPhone and iPad

Apple added a dark mode for its devices. Nosotros've covered how to use dark manner on the iPhone.

vi. Install AMOLED-Friendly Night Icons (Android)

Minma Icon Pack changes your bright, screen-damaging icons into a darker, OLED-friendly palette. Over 300 icons are available, which cover the default icons as well as many others.

Minma is compatible with nigh Android launchers, and, all-time of all, it'southward completely free.

Download: Minma Icon Pack for Android (Free)

vii. Install Firefox Mobile With a Nighttime Theme (Android, iPhone)

Firefox Mobile is infinitely customizable. While they, unfortunately, removed many of their browser's mobile add-ons, y'all can however plow entire webpages black. And, on top of that, Firefox includes a dark theme.

I recommend installing an add-on. The easiest-to-use add-on is Dark Reader. Dark Reader does more than than merely change the color of Firefox's user interface; Dark Reader can modify webpages' to black backgrounds with red text, reducing eye strain and burn-in while also improving battery life.

Download: Firefox Mobile for Android | iOS (Costless)

8. Install Dark Reader Add-on for Firefox Mobile (Android, iPhone)

Firefox is the near extensible mobile browser out there. You can besides install an extension that turns websites dark and inverts text to white.

Download: Nighttime Reader for Firefox (Gratuitous)

9. AMOLED-Friendly Keyboard (Android)

Android's night-themed virtual keyboard options can reduce fire-in (and amend battery life). The best of these is SwiftKey, which allows users to alter the colour of their keyboards. The all-time SwiftKey theme I've seen so far is the Pumpkin theme. If you turn on Android's night theme, information technology automatically turns the keyboard blackness. In this case, you can only utilize the default keyboard.

If you lot do use SwiftKey, my favorite theme is Pumpkin, which uses black keys with an orange typeface.

Download: SwiftKey for Android (Free)

In that location are a few other burn-in repair tools, but I don't recommend them since they either crave root access and/or can increment screen harm. However, for reference, you can read near them below and why using them is a bad thought. They fall into two categories:

  1. Invert colors.
  2. Screen burn-in tools.

one. Invert Colors to Reduce Existing Burn-In

I do not recommend using this option unless your screen is already trashed. It volition crusade boosted damage just may reduce the appearance of already existing on-screen fire. Inverting colors simply reverses the colors displayed on your screen. Whites become blacks and vice-versa.

If you employ the phone with the colors inverted for extended periods of time, it volition burn-in the areas surrounding the burned-in navigation bar, reducing its visibility.

Android four.0 (Water ice Cream Sandwich) introduced the Invert colors option to help the visually impaired. It's non at all designed to combat burn-in and remains experimental. To capsize colors, have the following steps:

  1. Navigate to Settings.
  2. Select Accessibility > Display.
  3. Turn on Colour inversion.

2. Screen Burn-In Tools

Several tools claim to reduce the advent of burn-in past attempting to age the entirety of your OLED panel. These screen burn-in tools wink red, green, and blue (or other) colors on your screen.

None of these are very expert, although they might exercise what they claim. Unfortunately, they are fifty-fifty more probable to make your burn-in far worse.

The reason is pretty simple: AMOLED burn-in occurs as a natural function of an organic LED's life wheel. Therefore, tools that claim to prepare AMOLED burn-in will cause compatible damage beyond all AMOLED pixels thus potentially worsening its image quality.

Practise You Have AMOLED Screen Burn-In?

None of these methods volition stop the inevitable and tedious destruction of your device'southward screen. All the same, using all the recommended options in this article will dramatically decrease the rate at which it decays. That said, some of the oldest AMOLED phones have very little burn-in. The decay of organic LEDs is near entirely aesthetic, particularly on newer phones.