Black Screen

This black screen turns your monitor, laptop, TV or phone completely black with one click, hides the mouse pointer and keeps the display awake. The screen looks switched off while your computer keeps running, which is handy when you want a dark screen at night, during a pause in a presentation, or while cleaning. On an OLED screen pure black turns the pixels off entirely. On an LCD it shows how much light leaks from the backlight. Three near black shades at 2, 5 and 10% check whether your screen hides dark detail. It works in Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox on Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, Android, iPhone and iPad.

How to use the black screen

1. Leave Pure black selected for darkness, OLED use and backlight checks. Pick 2%, 5% or 10% for the shadow detail check further down.
2. Click the preview, tap it, or press F. The display goes black and the pointer disappears after two seconds.
3. Use the left and right arrow keys, or swipe sideways on a phone, to step between pure black and the near black shades without leaving full screen.
4. Press Esc, or double tap on a touch screen, to come back.
5. If you want the computer to be allowed to sleep later, pick a timer. When it runs out the page stops holding the screen awake and your normal sleep settings take over.

What the shades and readouts mean

The brightness slider is switched off on pure black, because black cannot get any darker.

Pure black on OLED and LCD screens

An OLED screen, used in most recent phones, many laptops and OLED TVs and monitors, makes light in each pixel. Pure black switches those pixels off, so a black screen on an OLED looks the same as a screen that is off and draws very little power.

An LCD screen has a backlight behind the picture that stays on, and the liquid crystal layer blocks most of that light but not all. Black therefore shows as a very dark grey. IPS panels typically reach a contrast of about 1000:1 and VA panels about 3000:1, which means their black is a thousandth or a three thousandth as bright as white. Mini LED screens dim parts of the backlight behind dark areas, so a full black screen may switch those zones nearly off.

Check for backlight bleed and IPS glow

A black screen in a dark room is the standard way to look for light leaking around the edges of an LCD.

1. Turn off the room lights and let your eyes adjust for a minute.
2. Set the monitor to the brightness you normally use. Testing at maximum makes every panel look worse than it is in daily use.
3. Open the black screen and sit at your normal distance.
4. Look for bright patches that stay in place when you move your head. That is backlight bleed, light escaping where the panel meets the frame.
5. A silvery glow in the corners that changes or fades when you move your head is IPS glow, which is normal for IPS panels.

Cameras exaggerate bleed, so judge with your eyes, not a long exposure photo. Bleed you can see in films or games at normal brightness is worth a return while you are still inside the shop's return window. Do not press on the panel or loosen the frame screws to fix it, because that can crack the panel and ends the warranty. For a guided version of this check, use the backlight bleed test.

Find stuck pixels and dust

On a black screen every lit pixel stands out. A red, green, blue or white dot that stays in the same place is a stuck pixel, a subpixel that is always on. A dark spot on a black screen cannot be seen, so check for dead pixels on a white screen too, or run the dead pixel test to see every test color in turn.

With the room lights on, a black screen also shows dust, lint and fingerprints as light specks and smears, which makes it the easiest color for a final check after cleaning.

Does your screen hide dark detail? (black crush)

1. In a dark room, open Pure black full screen.
2. Press the right arrow to switch to Near black 2%, then back again.
3. Do the same with 5%. On a well set up screen 5% is easy to see, and 2% is just visible in a dark room.

If 5% looks exactly like pure black, your screen is crushing shadows, and dark scenes in films and games will lose detail. Common fixes:

• Raise the monitor's brightness, or its black level or black equalizer setting.
• On a TV used with a PC or console, match the HDMI black level. The PC sends full range (0 to 255) and the TV expects limited range (16 to 235), or the other way round. Set both to the same: on Windows use the graphics control panel (NVIDIA Output dynamic range, AMD Pixel format, Intel Quantization range), and on the TV choose the matching HDMI black level or RGB range.
• If even pure black looks clearly grey and 2% stands out strongly, the black level is set too high and dark scenes look washed out.

Use a black screen to hide the screen, not switch it off

A black full screen keeps the computer awake while it looks off. That helps when you need a long download, a render or a remote session to keep running, when you pause a presentation without showing your desktop, or when an OLED TV or monitor is your computer screen and you step away. A static desktop shown for hours can leave a permanent image on an OLED, and black avoids it. Run an OLED burn in test if you think an image has already stuck.

A black screen you did not choose

If your own computer or phone has gone black on its own, the page above is not the problem, but these steps solve most cases:

• Windows, black screen after sign in: press Win + Ctrl + Shift + B to restart the graphics driver. You hear a beep and the screen flickers.
• Windows, black screen with a cursor: press Ctrl + Shift + Esc, choose Run new task, type explorer.exe and press Enter.
• Laptop with a second display: press Win + P and pick PC screen only or Duplicate, in case the picture went to a display that is off.
• Monitor says no signal: check the cable and the input source button, then follow monitor no signal.
• iPhone that stays black but rings: force restart it. Press and release volume up, press and release volume down, then hold the side button until the Apple logo appears.
• Black screen when streaming in Discord or a meeting app: protected video from streaming services shows as black in screen shares on purpose. For other apps, turn off hardware acceleration in the app's settings and try again.

Microsoft's guide to troubleshooting blank screens in Windows covers Safe Mode, rolling back the display driver and System Restore when these steps are not enough. A Windows black screen with an error message is the newer form of the blue screen stop error, and has the same fixes.

What a black screen in a browser cannot do

The page cannot switch off an LCD backlight, so black on an LCD is never as dark as a screen that is off. Battery saver and Low Power Mode can refuse to keep the screen awake, which the Screen readout shows as Blocked. A black screen is not a lock: anyone can press Esc. For a dark mid tone to check uniformity, use the grey screen test instead.

Black screen questions