What is a white screen?
A white screen fills your whole display with plain white and nothing else. It turns a laptop, monitor, tablet or phone into a soft, even light, and it makes dark specks such as dead pixels, dust and smudges easy to see.
How to use your screen as a white light
- Choose a tone: pure white, warm, neutral or daylight.
- Set the brightness, and turn your device's own brightness up for the strongest light.
- Click Open white screen. It fills the whole display.
- Double-click, double-tap or press Esc to exit.
What can I use a white screen for?
| Use | Tip |
|---|---|
| Light for video calls | Open the white screen on a second monitor or tablet behind your camera. A warm tone looks more natural on skin. |
| Tracing a drawing | Lay thin paper over a tablet or laptop screen at full brightness and trace the lines through it. Don't press hard on the screen. |
| Finding dead pixels | Dead pixels show as black dots on white. Use the black screen to find bright stuck pixels. |
| Cleaning the screen | Dust, streaks and fingerprints stand out against white. Wipe with a dry microfibre cloth. |
| Reading light or night light | Lower the brightness and choose Warm for a gentle light that is easy on the eyes. |
| Checking evenness | Yellow or pink patches and darker corners on full white point to an uneven panel. |
Which tone should I choose?
Pure white is the brightest and the best for pixel checks. Warm is like a soft lamp and flatters faces on camera. Neutral sits between the two, and Daylight is slightly blue, like an overcast sky, which helps when you want colours to look the way they do outdoors.
The brightness slider makes the white softer on screen. For a stronger light, turn up your device's own brightness: a web page can't go brighter than the screen itself.
White Screen: questions and answers
How do I make my screen completely white?
Click Open white screen on this page. It opens in full screen; double-click, double-tap or press Esc to exit.
Can I use a white screen as a light for Zoom or Teams calls?
Yes. Put a laptop, tablet or second monitor showing the white screen behind or next to your camera, facing you. A warm tone at medium brightness usually looks best.
Will the screen turn off while the white screen is open?
Not while Keep the screen from going to sleep is ticked, in browsers that support the screen wake lock. It is released as soon as you exit.
Does a white screen use more battery?
On OLED phones and laptops, yes: every pixel is lit. On LCD screens the backlight is on anyway, so white costs about the same as anything else.
Why doesn't it go full screen on my iPhone?
Safari on iPhone doesn't allow full screen for web pages, so the white fills the page instead. Turn the phone sideways and hide the toolbar for the biggest area.