Noticing a tiny, glaring speck of color on your brand new phone screen or an old device you just pulled out of a drawer is an absolute nightmare. Your eyes immediately lock onto it, and suddenly you can’t look at anything else.

Before you panic and drop a fortune at a repair shop, you need to check out this screen diagnostic and fix tool.

HUNT DOWN THOSE ANNOYING DEAD PIXELS

What even is a defective pixel, anyway? Basically, it’s just a tiny stubborn point on your liquid crystal display that refuses to do its job.

Sometimes you get bright dot defects glowing like tiny stars. Other times you get dark spots, stuck sub pixels, or annoying phantoms which is basically when a static image gets burned into the matrix and leaves a ghostly shadow. You might even have a dead pixel right now and not even realize it yet. This program runs your display through a rigorous test to spot every single flaw on your phone or tablet, no matter how high the resolution is.

FIX THE SCREEN WITHOUT SMASHING IT

If you find a stuck pixel, the app lets you run automated treatment cycles to try and jolt it back to life.

It cycles through high speed color flashes and different visual patterns designed to wake up lazy liquid crystals. It even helps fight screen burn in. You literally just launch the app, set your phone down, and let it run for a while.

Some old school tech guides suggest taking a physical object and pressing directly on the screen to manually fix a stuck spot. Do not do that. Unless you want to completely shatter your glass matrix, skip the risky physical pressure entirely and let software do the heavy lifting safely.

KNOW YOUR LIMITS

Let’s keep expectations realistic. Software isn’t actual magic.

If a pixel is truly dead and completely fried at a hardware level, running an app for a few hours isn’t going to resurrect it. If the app runs its course and the spot is still staring back at you, those pixels are gone for good, and you will actually need to visit a service center.

Download the app, run the test, and give your screen a fighting chance before giving up.