How to use the black screen
A black screen fills your whole display with pure black (#000000), which turns OLED pixels off and hides everything on an LCD.
- Pick your options if you want them: a timer, a clock or a slower fade.
- Press Start black screen. The page fills the screen and fades to black.
- To leave, press Esc, double-tap or double-click. A single tap or mouse move only shows the ✕ button and a reminder.
Your options stay saved in this browser, so the next black screen starts the same way. While the screen is black, press C to show or hide the clock, or T to see the time left.
Timer, keep-awake and clock
The black screen timer runs from 5 minutes to 10 hours. When it ends, the page either exits full screen or lets the screen sleep, so a forgotten laptop doesn’t stay on all night.
Keep awake stops the display from dimming or locking while the page is black. The optional clock is gray and moves a few pixels every minute, so no pixel stays lit in one place. You can show the time left under it, too.
What a blank black screen is good for
A blank black screen helps whenever a display must stay on but show nothing. A full black screen can:
- Rest an OLED phone, monitor or TV while a download, stream or call continues.
- Black out a second monitor while you game or watch a movie on the main one.
- Let music play from another window without a bright screen in a dark room.
- Darken a bedroom or a darkroom, with a dim clock if you like.
- Pause a projector or TV between slides without showing your desktop.
- Give photographers a dark, even background, or a black frame for a video.
With two monitors in Chrome or Edge, Choose screen sends the black screen straight to the other display. In other browsers, drag the window there first.
Black screen for testing
Pure black shows problems that bright images hide, which makes this page a quick black screen test. Bright or colored dots point to stuck or hot pixels, so run the dead pixel test next. Light glowing at the edges is backlight bleed, which the backlight bleed test checks step by step.
As a black screen OLED test, look for faint shapes of a taskbar or logo. If you see any, an OLED burn-in test with gray screens shows them more clearly.
Black screen vs a 10-hour black video
A black screen video on YouTube works too, but it decodes video the whole time, shows player controls and can play ads. This page is a still image, so it uses almost no processing power. It shows no ads in full screen and keeps working if the connection drops after it loads.
OLED vs LCD: what black really does
OLED pixels make their own light. A black pixel is switched off, so it uses almost no power and doesn’t wear. LCD screens work differently: a backlight shines through the panel all the time, so black still glows faintly and saves little power.
On an OLED, the risk is static content, not black. A clock, taskbar or logo that stays in one place can burn in over many hours. That’s why this page’s clock keeps moving.
On an LCD, lowering the brightness saves more power than any black image.
Download a black screen image or wallpaper
Open Download black image to save a PNG made in your browser. Sizes include your screen’s exact resolution, 1920 × 1080, 2560 × 1440, 4K (3840 × 2160), 1080 × 1920 for 9:16 vertical video and a 1080 × 1080 square.
Use the file as a black screen wallpaper, a black frame in a video edit or an HD black slide. Nothing is uploaded, and there’s no watermark. On an iPhone, Safari saves the file to Downloads in the Files app.
Black screen on iPhone, Android, PC and TV
- iPhone and iPad: Safari on iPhone can’t put part of a page in full screen, so the black screen fills the browser window. Turn the phone sideways and scroll up slightly to hide the address bar. For a cleaner black, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen, and open the page from its new icon. It opens without Safari’s bars.
- Android: Chrome shows a true full black screen, and keep-awake works in current versions.
- PC and laptop: press Start rather than F11. F11 hides the browser bars, but you’d still see the page. On a laptop, plug in so battery saving doesn’t dim the screen.
- TV: open this page in the TV’s browser. Or connect a laptop with HDMI and drag the window to the TV before you press Start.
Screen black when it shouldn’t be?
If your screen turns black on its own, the cause is usually a setting, a cable or a driver, not a broken panel.
- Windows: press Win + Ctrl + Shift + B to restart the graphics driver. Check the cable and the monitor’s input, then install Windows and graphics driver updates. Microsoft’s support site has a step-by-step guide for black screens.
- Black video with sound: streaming services block screenshots, screen sharing and recordings of their videos, so those show black. Some HDMI adapters and capture cards also fail the HDCP copy-protection check.
- OBS black screen: run OBS as administrator for Game Capture. On laptops with two graphics chips, OBS and the game must use the same one, which you can set in the Windows graphics settings.
- Laptop screen black, external monitor fine: Windows may be set to show only the second screen. Press Win + P and choose Duplicate or Extend.