Comment by ndiddy
1 day ago
> 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.
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.
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.
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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.
> 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?
Reminds me of the degauss button on my old eizo crt...
I miss the sound and visuals from a good degaussing
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.
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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.
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And yet, they own the device. If they choose to not care about burn-in and want their device to respect that, that's their prerogative, not anyone else's.
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.
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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.
Is is possible that some technologies could have longevity trade offs and not be "planned obsolescence"?
Pixel cleaning sounds little like blinker fluid to me...
I don't think learning more about what it does is going to make them change their mind here.
> 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?
That's exactly what it is, and it's pretty important to run
Or update the firmware to do it every n hours or screen blanks or something automatic with no nag
Every 8 hours is insane, though
That is just crap UX. Sonys OLED tv-s for example do this automatically while in standby mode in addition to pixel shift while displaying an image. On the other hand Phillips OLED tv-s also ask the user if they want to do a panel refresh.
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 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".
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I think there are actions a user may sometimes wish to take that software should simply refuse, ideally. Some actions are, and can only be, mistakes. I don't think it's a bad idea for software and hardware to defend itself against misinformed, confused, or clumsy users.
>...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.