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Comment by ndiddy | Hacker News Reader

> My ASUS ROG Swift PG42UQ monitor was actually where I started, because I got annoyed at the pop-up overlay that comes up every once in a while that tells me to run “pixel cleaning”. I have never intentionally run pixel cleaning on this monitor and I never will, I don’t care, and I would like for that overlay to go away forever. Maybe there’s a debug menu or something that can turn it off, or worst case we patch a branch in the firmware?

Note that this is an OLED monitor, so the "pixel cleaning" thing is probably some sort of anti-burn in feature. You could probably ask the AI to look at the firmware and describe what it does.

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Yeah, you actually want to do this with monitors of that generation to make them last.

You could argue that there should be an option to disable it for people who don’t care.

Refusing to take 1 minute out of your day to learn the reason for the alert is a strange self-defeating protest next to the explanation that it was a pretty expensive monitor.

Eh I think the monitors should just handle this automatically - mine do. I basically have no idea that they do any cleaning cycles except when I check their “advanced” menu and it says it’s run 1200 times or whatever

They can.... which everyone bitched about: they would do their cleaning cycle, no matter if you were busy or not.

Then they should do it at another time...? Obviously?

And thats why we have the warning that everyone bitches about: "Hey, the timer is up, but I'm not gonna make you do it, its just gonna wear the display out faster".

Early OLEDs really did need to be pixel cleaned every 8 hours according to manufacturer estimates, the choice isn't have warning or not, its have a lifespan or not.

I don't want to blame early adopters for being early adopters, but they early adopted, and this is the early adoption problem.

Because the run a full blown OSes on monitors now, and for some reason it cannot figure out the simple "wait until you're off for at least 10 minutes to do the cycle instead of bothering the user at random intervals"

They do run it when its off as well.

I have an MSI OLED monitor, and if I accidentally turn it off (trying to find the input switcher), and then back on, it shows this warning.

But it automatically runs when it's turned off. The warning is shown because I interrupted it running early.

The warning, for my purposes, is completely useless, and only an annoyance. The automatic feature is more than enough, and I don't need to know if it was aborted early.

Then turn off the warning: all modern OLED monitors that do not force you to run it can both change when the timer fires, but also just disable the notification altogether.

This is what I have done on mine, and mine as well also runs it when its off.

If your monitor is a Samsung OLED panel, yours is a near identical sibling of mine.

I understand what it does, I think the alert is annoying. It takes at least five minutes and automatically runs when the monitor is off. I’ve had it for a few years and have no burn in issues despite not doing this every eight hours on command.

Agreed.. and it has an incredibly frustrating and hostile UX.

I've been sharing my screen in work in meetings and suddenly screen nagged, and then I'm struggling to find the dumb buttons under the monitor and confused which button does what to make it go away.

I would rather suffer burn in than be nagged. I've had other brand OLEDs that haven't been this annoying, so I'll never buy an Asus monitor again.

AOC/Agon OLEDs also have the annoying nag that fires repeatedly to say "Your monitor will go into pixel cleaning mode in 10/5/4/3/2/1 minutes". I still haven't figured out how to easily defer that, and it's super annoying when in the middle of a Rocket League match that the monitor just turns itself off to pixel clean for 10 minutes.

> Yeah, you actually want to do this with monitors of that generation to make them last.

Brand new models still have this popup... what "generation" are you talking about that doesn't need this? Or is it just unnecessary on the newer models but they have it any ways due to lack of firmware updates?

How is it strange that among the 900,000 1-minute tasks you need to complete on a given day, this one is low on the list?

Some people's time is actually worth or even just valued more than others to be bothered doing maintenance tasks such as there. I have a life to live outside preserving every last minute of functionality out of a monitor, I'll buy a new one eventually regardless.

I think it's nearly impossible to explain the benefit of not seeing such a popup to most people.

It comes down to the joy of doing things, and if the joy of using said monitor depends on a popup not being shown, then so be it.

I hope that the popup can be removed :)

My MSI monitor does it, I don't object to it in principle. What I do object to is a tool, that I own, demanding this is done on its own schedule rather than mine in a way I can't always dismiss. There's no reason it shouldn't be configurable to do it at three in the morning rather than when I'm trying to run the standup for example.

Definitely will be checking more carefully the next time I buy an OLED monitor that it'll let me do this.

Reminds me of the degauss button on my old eizo crt...

I miss the sound and visuals from a good degaussing

The Internet seems rather reluctant to explain what exactly "pixel cleaning" does, but based on the vague useless "explanations" I could find, I suspect it's a sort of "flat-field correction" where it calibrates the pixel drive current to darken the less worn and/or brighten the more worn ones so it eliminates the burn-in effect. This obviously leads to a vicious cycle where more worn pixels are driven harder and hence wear faster...

IMHO OLED is a planned-obsolescence dead-end anyway; LCDs can last literally decades, maybe with a backlight replacement, but OLEDs are designed to fail in a few years. I have a few (rather expensive) pieces of test equipment with OLEDs that became unreadable after only a few years and had to be replaced (fortunately with a regular LCD, and some firmware patching), while others with old-school CSTN/TN LCDs are still fine.

If OLEDs are 'designed to fail' they've certainly gone about it in a very roundabout way - there would be much easier ways to do planned obsolescence if that was actually the goal of display manufacturers.

I have a LG wallpaper TV 65" from 2021. I see no burn-in whatsoever. Once in a while it says "we will do the pixel refresher thing when you turn off the TV".

I'm pretty sure there's something to it but I'm no expert. Five years later and my TV is just fine.

A TV displays constantly changing images.

A monitor displays items that can stay fixed in place a long time, hours or even days.

Not the same at all.

I use it as a monitor as well. I think the key here is what LG calls "screen shift" which makes obvious sense. No magic, just move the pixels around to prevent stuff like HUD and logos from burning the screen.

OLEDS have two HUGE advantages over LCDs

Extremely accurate and vivid colors due to their low black level.

And VERY fast pixel response times, 0.01ms to 0.03ms compared to 1ms to 5ms for the fastest LCD gaming monitors.

Yeah OLEDs are the first display tech we've had that is on par or better than CRTs in all aspects. On balance the tradeoffs were definitely worth it for the various LCD panel options but motion clarity, colour intensity and black levels were all still beaten by a CRT in a dark room until we got OLEDs.

OLED burn in is not "planned obsolescence" any more than the "self-emptying gas tank". That's pure ignorance.

OLEDs burn in because of simple physics. The same reason your car's gas tank empties when you use it instead of some secret cabal stealing your gas to make you buy more. Ignorant nonsense.

It's not "simple" physics. Or can you explain the physics?

Every display technology tries to suffer burn in if there's any long-term physical change at all from lighting up a pixel, because it will affect the ones that are lit up more often. That part is simple. However we did get around it with every other technology so please explain why it's not even theoretically preventable with OLED.

Perhaps you didn't read the text you just copied and pasted, but here it is for you:

"I have never intentionally run pixel cleaning on this monitor and I never will, I don’t care, and I would like for that overlay to go away forever."

No need for ackshually, the guy is clear with what he desires. That is, by the way, the point of TFA. I want my devices to do what I want, not what a product manager wants or what a dude on hacker news wants.

The author even dropped a comment here doubling down on his intent. That is the main problem, when the smaht guys think they know better, to a pathological extent where they tell other people what they ought to do with their things .

>...the smaht guys think they know better, to a pathological extent where they tell other people what they ought to do with their things .

Not just tell, actually nag, coerce and force, often in the teeth of their own total idiocy.

"Your password needs to be between 8 and 15 characters and include an upper case letter, a symbol and a number. (And an actually good, strong password will be rejected).

See that all the time, still, in 2026. So very smaht.

The user should be the final authority over what his computer does. Not the computer manufacturer. Not the OS developer. Not the 3P app developer. Not some product manager at a software company. The end user.

Even time computer says no, or does something without your permission, or does something counter to your wishes, or alerts you to do something, or urges you to do something, or makes you opt-out, is a failure.

The end user disables pixel cleaning because the pop-up annoys them. They then start bitching about burn-in within 6 months, RMA the monitor even though it was their choice to do so, and spread negative sentiment about your brand going forward for being "prone to burn in".

What's the chance he would then get mad in a week when his monitor has visible burn-in, and try to return it?

> You could probably ask the AI to look at the firmware and describe what it does.

Or ask for a patch so it runs after the monitor has been powered off for a while...

I use an LG OLED 42inch TV as a monitor and it has a setting to do just this.

I looked it up, his monitor does do it automatically after it's been powered off for a few minutes. He's getting the nag message because the monitor has been on and displaying a picture for over 8 hours.

I have an ASUS PG32UCDM and an ASUS XG27UCDMG, and both can permanently disable the "pixel cleaning reminder." Have you tried update firmware and look in the monitor UI?

Or update the firmware to do it every n hours or screen blanks or something automatic with no nag

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