Screen Ghosting vs. Eye Afterimages: How to Tell Burn-In Apart and What to Do

“Afterimages” have different causes on the screen and in the eye

Two things can both be described as “seeing an afterimage”, yet they’re completely different depending on whether the screen is actually emitting it or your brain is creating it. The first is about the display’s characteristics or wear; the second is a temporary response of how your eyes work. Start by treating these two separately.

The deciding test is whether it moves when you move your eyes. An afterimage in the eye follows your gaze and is visible even with your eyes closed. A screen afterimage stays in the same place on the screen. That one check alone tells them apart in most cases.

There are two kinds of afterimage in the eye

Afterimages in the eye happen because retinal cells adapt to whatever you were just looking at. Depending on the direction of that adaptation, they look one of two ways.

• Positive afterimage: after a brief look at a bright light, an image of the same brightness and color lingers. It happens with a camera flash or when looking at a phone in a dark room, and fades within seconds.
• Negative afterimage: after looking at something for a while, you see an image with brightness or colors reversed. Staring at red leaves a blue-green afterimage; staring at white leaves a black one. It can last from a few seconds to tens of seconds.

A negative afterimage shows reversed colors because the cone cells that respond to the color you stared at temporarily lose sensitivity. Look at a white surface in that state and the cones that haven’t lost sensitivity respond relatively more strongly, so the opposite of the original color appears. This isn’t a fault or abnormality but a side effect of adaptation, a normal function.

Screen afterimages fall into three types

Depending on the cause, screen afterimages are fixable, fade with time, or are permanent. Mix these up and you’ll wait forever for something that won’t go away.

• Ghosting only bothers you with fast-moving content such as games or video. If a trace remains on still images, it’s something else.
• Image retention is a symptom you often notice the moment you switch to a dark background after working for hours with the same window layout.
• Burn-in remains in the shape of things that always appear in the same place (a taskbar, a TV channel logo, a game’s health bar, a map app’s buttons). Its outline is the shape of an object.

OLED panels in phones and TVs have pixels that emit light themselves, so uneven display time turns directly into differences in brightness. Typical LCDs, on the other hand, work by varying how much backlight passes through, so permanent burn-in is unlikely and most cases are temporary image retention.

Steps to work out which side it’s on

Work from the top and you can tell within a few minutes. Always go through these before considering a replacement.

1. 1

   Move your eyes

   While looking at the afterimage, slowly move your gaze to another part of the screen. If it follows your gaze, it’s on the eye side. If it stays in its original place on the screen, it’s on the screen side.

2. 2

   Close your eyes or look elsewhere

   If you can still see the image with your eyes closed, it’s definitely the eye side. If the same image appears when you look at a bright surface other than the screen, such as a wall or ceiling, it’s also the eye side.

3. 3

   Rest your eyes for about 30 seconds and look again

   Eye afterimages fade with time. Rest by looking at something far away, such as out of a window, and if it’s gone when you look back, it was the eye side.

4. 4

   Show a solid color full screen

   Show solid white, then light gray, then red, green and blue full screen. Screen afterimages appear in these solid colors as traces of patterns or text. Light gray is the easiest one to spot them in.

5. 5

   Show the same image on another device or input

   Display the same image on another monitor or a phone and see whether the trace appears. If it shows on only one, it’s that display’s problem. If it shows on both, suspect the image itself or your eyes.

What to do and how to prevent it on the screen side

Prevention is more reliable. Burn-in progresses when the same pixels stay lit brightly for a long time. Use settings that break at least one of these three conditions.

• Shorten the automatic screen-off time. Just having it turn off whenever you step away changes the total display time a lot.
• Don’t turn brightness up more than you need. Raise it only in bright rooms and lower it at night.
• Dark mode reduces the number of lit pixels on OLED.
• Turn on pixel shift (a feature that moves the image slightly) if available. It’s found on TVs and some monitors.
• Use auto-hide for the taskbar or dock to reduce elements that are always displayed.
• Don’t leave the same still image up for hours. When a document stays on screen for a long time, always set a screen saver.

Resting your eyes when it’s on the eye side

Eye afterimages go away on their own. If they come up often, focus on making them less likely rather than on getting rid of them.

• Look into the distance at regular intervals. A commonly cited guide is to look about 6 meters (20 feet) away for 20 seconds every 20 minutes. Making a habit of looking out of the window at natural breaks lasts longer than timing it.
• Reduce the difference in brightness between the screen and the room. Looking at a bright screen in a dark room is when afterimages are most likely.
• Avoid looking at high-contrast color schemes for long periods. Slightly softened text is easier on the eyes than pure black on white.
• Be conscious of blinking. When you stare at a screen you blink less, and dryness makes things harder to see.

Building breaks into your work means you won’t forget to rest. Splitting time like the Pomodoro Technique, alternating 25 minutes of work with 5 minutes of rest, also works well for resting your eyes. Specific steps are in how to use the Pomodoro Technique, and how to tell when eye fatigue isn’t going away is in what to do about eye strain from screens.

FAQ

What’s the simplest way to tell a screen afterimage from an eye afterimage?

Move your eyes. If the afterimage follows your gaze, or you can see it with your eyes closed, it’s on the eye side. If it stays in the same place on the screen, it’s on the screen side. To confirm, show light gray full screen: screen afterimages appear as traces in the gray, while eye afterimages fade within tens of seconds.

Can LCD monitors get burn-in too?

Typical LCDs work by varying how much backlight passes through, so they’re built in a way that makes OLED-style permanent burn-in unlikely. However, “image retention”, where a faint trace remains after showing the same screen for a long time, can happen. It almost always fades if you turn the display off for a while or play moving content.

Can OLED burn-in be fixed?

Pixel wear itself can’t be undone, so it basically can’t be fully fixed. If the device has a correction feature such as panel refresh, it may help reduce it. The realistic approach is prevention: lower the brightness, shorten the screen-off time, use dark mode and pixel shift, and reduce elements that are always displayed.

Does seeing afterimages mean my eyesight is getting worse?

A temporary afterimage after looking at something bright or strongly colored is a normal response from eye adaptation. It happens to everyone, so much so that it can be used for fun as a color afterimage illusion. However, if it comes with symptoms such as seeing it in only one eye, missing parts of your vision or flashes of light, or if afterimages keep lingering, that’s a different matter, so see an eye doctor.