White Screen

This white screen fills your monitor, laptop, phone or tablet with clean, even white light in one click. Choose Pure white, which is your display's own white point at about 6500 K, or warm it down to the 2700 K of a household bulb and cool it up to 9300 K. A dimmer, a timer that fades the light out by itself, and a switch that keeps your screen awake make it useful as a light source, a cleaning aid and a quick panel check. It runs in any current browser on Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, Android, iPhone and iPad, and nothing is installed.

How to use the white screen

1. Pick a shade with the keys above the preview. Pure is plain #FFFFFF. Warm matches a 2700 K bulb, Neutral a 4000 K office light, Daylight 5000 K, and Cool the bluish 9300 K of old TVs. Drag the color temperature slider for anything in between.
2. Set the brightness. 100% gives the most light. Lower values darken the white the page draws, which helps in a dark room.
3. Pick a timer if you want the light to fade out by itself, for example 30 minutes as a night light.
4. Click the preview, tap it, or press F. The white fills the entire display and the pointer hides after two seconds.
5. Change the light without leaving full screen: the left and right arrow keys step through the shades, up and down change brightness. On a phone, swipe sideways or up and down. Press Esc or double tap to exit.
6. For maximum light, turn your device's own brightness to the top in its system settings.

What the readouts mean

Use the white screen as a light

A screen at full white is a soft, even light source that you already own.

• Video calls. Put the white screen on a second monitor or a tablet beside your webcam, slightly above eye level. Warm white looks more natural on most skin tones than pure white. If you only have one screen, the screen light tool frames your camera view with light while you talk.
• Makeup and selfies. Hold a phone or tablet showing white at arm's length in front of your face. For a mirror with light around it, use the online mirror with light.
• Small product photos. Stand a tablet behind a glass, jewelry or a figure to light it from behind, or lay the object on the screen for a white background.
• Reading and finding things in the dark. Warm white at 20 to 40% is gentle enough for a bedroom and lasts longer on battery.

A screen is dimmer than a lamp. Most office monitors give about 250 to 350 nits at full white, which is plenty for a face at 60 cm but not for lighting a room.

Trace a drawing on your screen

1. Set Pure white at full brightness and open it full screen.
2. Lay a clear screen protector or a sheet of clear plastic over a tablet or laptop screen, then the original image, then your paper. Tape the corners.
3. Trace with a soft pencil and light pressure. Pressing hard on an LCD can leave marks in the panel.

On a touch screen your hand may register as swipes. On an iPad, turn on Guided Access in Settings > Accessibility > Guided Access, start it with a triple click of the top or Home button, open Options and switch Touch off. The screen then ignores your hand until you end the session.

A dark or colored dot stays on the white screen

As a white screen test, a full white display is the best background for finding pixels that do not light. A black dot that stays in the same place is a dead pixel, where all three subpixels are off. A red, green or blue dot is a stuck pixel, where one subpixel is lit all the time, and it usually shows more clearly on a black screen.

1. Wipe the spot first. Dust looks exactly like a dead pixel until you clean it.
2. Run the dead pixel test, which cycles through every test color so you can map each fault.
3. Stuck pixels sometimes recover with fast flashing colors from the stuck pixel fixer. Dead black pixels rarely come back.
4. Check your warranty. Many makers replace a monitor only above a set number of dead pixels, so note how many you found. The guide on how to fix dead pixels explains the usual policies.

Dust, smudges and streaks show up

A white screen shows dust and grease as grey specks and rainbow smears, which makes it the best color for cleaning.

1. Turn the screen off and let it cool, then open the white screen again to find what is left.
2. Wipe with a dry microfiber cloth in straight lines, without pressing.
3. For grease, dampen a corner of the cloth with distilled water. Never spray liquid onto the screen, and avoid window cleaner, which can strip anti-glare coatings.
4. Check again on white, then on black for any remaining lint.

The white looks yellow, blue or uneven

When the whole screen looks tinted, a setting is usually the cause:

• Windows: Night light in Settings > System > Display.
• Mac, iPhone and iPad: Night Shift and True Tone, which change white with the time of day and the room light.
• Monitors and Android phones: eye comfort, low blue light or reading modes in the monitor menu or display settings.

Turn them off and compare with Pure white. When only part of the screen looks different, such as darker corners, a yellow edge or a cloudy patch, the panel's backlight is uneven. A mid gray screen shows that unevenness more clearly than white, and the screen color test checks color accuracy.

The screen turns off after a few minutes

The page keeps the display awake with your browser's wake lock while the white screen is open. When the Screen readout says Not kept on or Blocked, raise the timeout yourself:

• Windows 11: Settings > System > Power & battery > Screen, sleep, & hibernate timeouts, then raise Turn my screen off after.
• Mac: System Settings > Lock Screen, then Turn display off on power adapter when inactive.
• iPhone and iPad: Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-Lock, then Never. Low Power Mode limits Auto-Lock to 30 seconds.
• Android: Settings > Display > Screen timeout, then the longest time.

Stuck on a white screen?

If your phone or computer shows a white screen you did not open, the device has frozen, an app has failed to draw its window, or the screen itself has a fault. Work through the case that matches yours:

• iPhone 8 or later: force restart. Press and release volume up, press and release volume down, then hold the side button until the Apple logo appears.
• Android phone: hold the power button for about 30 seconds until the phone restarts. On a Samsung Galaxy, hold the side key and volume down together for more than 7 seconds.
• Windows, white screen after sign in: press Win + Ctrl + Shift + B to restart the graphics driver. If the desktop stays white, open Task Manager with Ctrl + Shift + Esc and run explorer.exe as a new task.
• One app turns white: close and reopen it, then update it. In Chrome, Edge, Discord or Steam, switching off hardware acceleration in the app's settings often cures a blank white window.
• A website shows only a blank white page: the site itself has failed, usually from a server error or a broken plugin. Reload after a minute or try another browser. Only the site's owner can fix it.
• A laptop screen that is white or striped from the moment it turns on, before the maker's logo: the panel or its cable has failed. Connect an external monitor to confirm, then arrange a repair.

What a white screen in a browser cannot do

A web page cannot raise your screen's backlight or go brighter than your system setting allows, so the brightness control only darkens the picture. The warm and cool shades are calculated for a standard screen, and real displays differ a little, so 2700 K here is close to a warm bulb rather than an exact match. Safari on iPhone does not allow pages to hide the address bar. For other colors, open the color screen with any hex code.

White screen questions